



W8 M if • 



J UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. J 




SYLLABUS AND NOTES 



THE COUKSE 



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Inwra C|eoIflgkaI Ibrattarg, Wix$m 



E. L. DABNEY, D. D. 



PUBLISHED BY TIBCE STUDENTS. 



EICHMOND: 

Shepperson & Graves, Printers. 
1871. 



• 



3T15- 



Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1871, by 

E. L. DABNEY, D. D., 
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 




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CONTENTS 



PART I. 
Natural Theology. 

Lecture I, II. Prefatory, and Existence of God ,. 5 

III, IV. Divine Attributes 21 

V. Immortality of Souls and Future Rewards. 34 

VI. The Sources of our Thinking 42 

VII. VIII. Ethical Theories 56 

IX. Free Agency and the Will -- - 11 

X. Responsibility and Province of Reason in 
Religion 78 



Lecture 



Lecture 



Revealed Theology. 

XI, XII, XTTT. God and His Attributes 85 

XIV. The Trinity 109 

XV. Divinity of Christ 116 

XVI. Divinity of the Holy Ghost, and of 

the Son -- 125 

XVII. Personal Distinctions in the Trinity. 131 

XVIII. Decree of God. 139 

XIX. XX. Predestination - 148 

XXI. Creation 166 

XXH. Angels 179 

XXHI. Providence 189 

XXIV. Man's Estate of Innocence and the 

Covenant of Works 200 

XXVH. The Fall, and Original Sin. 209 



XXV, 

xxvni— xxxhi. 



The Law. 



239 



PART n. 



Lecture XXXIV— XXXVI. The Covenant of Grace . . 
XXXVII, X XXVffl. The Mediator of the Cove- 
nant of Grace 

" XXXIX. Mediatorial Offices 



23 
35 



CONTENTS. 



XL, XLI. 

XLII. 

XLIII. 

XLIV, XLV. 
XLVI, XLVIL 

XLVIII. 
XLIX. 
L— LII. 
LIIL 
LIV, LV. 

LVI. 
LVII. 
LVIII. 
LIX, LX. 
LXI, LXII. 
LXIII, LXIV. 
LXV, LXVI. 
LXVIL 
LXVIII. 
LXIX. 

LXX. 

LXXI. 
LXXII. 



Nature of the Atonement. 43 

Purgatory 65 

Christ's Humiliation and 

Exaltation 73 

Effectual Calling 79 

Armenian Theory of Re- 
demption 91 

Faith 106 

Union to Christ 115 

Justification 119 

Repentance 144 

Salification and Good 

Works 152 

Perseverance of Saints 169 

Assurance of Hope 177 

Prayer 186 

The Sacraments 196 

Baptism--. 212 

Subjects of Baptism 227 

The Lord's Supper 247 

Death of Believers 262 

The Resurrection 270 

The General Judgment, 

and Etern al Life 280 

Nature and Duration of 

Hell Torments 289 

The Civil Magistrate 299 

Religious Liberty 309 



TABLE OF ERRATA. 



Note. — Owing to the circumstances under which these lectures were 
printed, it has been impossible to prevent a number of mistakes from 
appearing in the text, some of which are quite serious. An attempt 
(necessarily a hurried one) has been made to collect most of them in 
the table given below. Many, however, which are purely typographical, 
and some others which can be readily corrected by the reader, are not 
included. It is possible that some have been omitted which should 
have been inserted, but it is hoped that these will not occasion serious 
inconvenience to the reader : 

Page 18, 10th line from bottom, for divine, read diverse. 

bottom, for seccession, read succession. 
top, for prelations, read relations. 
bottom, for long, read bony. 
top, for posteriori, read fortiori. 
top, for " I do not assert," read I do assert. 
bottom, for origidal, read original. 
top, for resalted, read resulted. 
bottom, for anomis, read anomia. 
top, for hings, read things. 
bottom, for Jew Pater, read Jupiter. 
bottom, for Paul's, read God's. 
for promise, read premise. 



28, 9th 


a 


35, 9th 


a 


35, 5th 


a 


39, 12th 


a 


56, 2d 


tt 


57, 16th 


it, 


76, 4th 


a 


80, 26th 


a 


82, 8th 


it 


86, 9th 


a 


93, 8th 


a 


93, bottom line, 


95, 16th line fr 


102, 7th 


a 


102, 6th 


a 


103, 11th 


a 


108, llth 


a 


111, 10th 


a 


113, 10th 


a 


118, 5th 


a 


120, 2d 


it 


122, 10th 


a 


123, 19th 


a 


134, 21st 


a 


157, 16th 


a 



bottom, for Ps. lxlii, read Ps. xcvii. 

bottom, for cxlv: 16, read cxlv : 17. 

bottom, for Ps. lxliv, read xciv. 

top, for His, read of His. 

top, for katisma katismatos, read htisma 
ktismatos. 

bottom, for rain-, read mine. 

top, place comma after Logos. 

bottom, for xix, read xviii. 

bottom, for sanies, read names. 

bottom, for Acrians, read Arians. 

top, for incita, read insita. 

bottom, insert 2. before It. 
164, 1st line, for prospon, read prosapon. 
176, 14th line from bottom, for summers, read centuries. 
180, 13th " bottom, for " is the death," read is not 

the death. 



ERRATA. 

" 186,18th «« top, for "sinful head," read sinful men. 
" 187, 6th " bottom, for Theleniadzoinenoi, read Se- 

leniadzomenoi. 

" 189, 8th " top, for reasons, read seasons. 

" 190, 12th " top, for prodesis, read p?'0thesis. 

" 195, 22d " top, for complimentary, read complementary. 

" 199, 25th " top, for " ox yux," read efflux. 

" 202, 2d " top, for "and modified," read "and not 

modified." 

" 202, 16th " bottom, for equality, read equally. 

" 209, 20th " top, after Adam's, insert descendants. 

" 210, 2d " top, for "9, § 3," read " 10, § 1." 

" 210,13th " top, for insperable, read inseparable. 

" 221, 23d " top, for Fabricin, read Fabricius. 

ci 234, 3d " top, for improved, read unproved. 

" 237, 13th " bottom, for ill-starved, read ill-starred. 

" 240, 10th " bottom, after " when " insert we. 

tt> After page 240, eight pages are numbered 225-232, for 241-248. 
Page 246, 28th line from bottom, for edoulensate, read edouleusate. 

" 256, top line, for expicit, read explicit. 

" 290, 1st line, for xxxi, read xxxii. 

" 296, 18th line from bottom, for line read hire. 
297, middle of page, for xxxii, read xxxiii. 



it 



PART II. 

The first Lecture should be No. XXXIV, and all the following 
changed accordingly. 
Page 1, 17th line from top, for "Dick Lect. 49," read Dick Led. 48. 

" 3, 25th " bottom, for kames, read kaine. 

" 9, 6th " top, for Racorian, read Racovian. 

" 9, 21st " top, for Knaap, read Knapp. 

" 10, last word of second line, for "of," read no. 

" 10, 7th line from top, for modum, read nodum. 

" 15,14th " bottom, for « to," read is, that. 

" 17, 24th " bottom, for liberal, read literal. 

" 23,28th " bottom, for resumed, read assumed. 

" 26, 3d " top, for MoDuestia, read Mopsuestia. 

" 26, 7th " top, for Theodoret, read Theodore. 

" 26, 2d and 25th lines from bottom, for Enosis, read henosis. 

" 32, 3d line from top, for Decrteum, read decretum. 

" 32,18th " for second, read first. 

" 34, 11th line from bottom, for reasons, read seaso?is. 

" 36, 25th " top, for notus, read nodus. 

" 36,16th " bottom, after " Socinians," insert tho parenthe- 
sis just preceding. 

" 36, 16th " bottom, for Eph. read Pel. 

" 4C, 25th " top, for primitive, read punitive. 

" 43, 18th " bottom, for axcated, read exacted. 

" 46,15th " " for "it might be generous," read gen- 

erous it might be. 






ERRATA. 

" 52,15th " " for " may seem," read may be seen. 

" 52, 12th " " for Dutram, read Outram. 

" 53, 9th " . " for quality, read quantity. 

" 54, 12th " top, for distinguished, read extinguished. 

" 66, 4th " top, for « on," read of. 

" 69, 16th «' bottom, for converse, read contrary. 

" 69, 11th " " for 12, read 18. 

" 69, 10th « " for Tim. read Cor. 

" 71,20th " " for raetus, read reatus. 

" 72, 1st line, for satisfaction, read sanctification. 

" 75, 23d line from top, for xv : 10, read xvi : 8. 

" 75, 22d " bottom, for 400, read 500. 

" 76, 22d " top, after " does," dele not. 

" 77, 13th " top, for masked, read asked. 

" 100, 19th " top, for perceptively, read ^receptively \ 

" 116,17th " bottom, for rauo, read muo. 

" 118, 9th " top, for synaphcia, read sunapheia. 

" 121, 14th « bottom, for liv, read li. 

" 122, 6th " bottom, for imitation, read initiation. 

(i 125, 12th " bottom, for tertum, read tertium. 

" 128. From this point, the Lectures are correctly numbered. 

li 135, 10th line from top, for 6, read 16. 

" 136, 12th " " for Philem. xviii, read Philem. 18. 

" 169, 5th " «« for 61, read 16. 

"197,17th " « for " of," read or. 

" 200, 14th « « for 302, read 198. 

" 209, 20th lt bottom, for union, read ruin. 



NOTE TO THE READER. 



Ad Lectorem. — Our preceptor in Theology having given to the classes 
the course of lectures which he had delivered to previous ones, to be used by 
us in any manner we found most convenient for our assistance in this study, 
we have printed them in this form for private circulation among ourselves, 
our predecessors and successors in the Seminary. Our reasons for doing so 
are the following : We found these lectures useful, so far as we had pro- 
ceeded, in assisting our comprehension of the text-books. As Dr. Dabney 
announced a change in the method of his instruction, in which he would 
cease to deliver the lectures orally, from his chair ; and placed them in MS- 
at the disposal of the students, we desired to continue to avail ourselves of 
their assistance. To provide ourselves with copies, and to extend their use 
to subsequent fellow-students, the most convenient and obvious mode was 
to print them. This has been done at the expense of the students of 1870 ; 
and a small number of copies, beyond our own need, has been struck off. 

A few explanations may be necessary for the understanding of the method 
of study, of which these notes form a part. The system consists of recita- 
tions on lessons from text-books, chiefly the Confession of Faith and Turret- 
tin's Elenchtic Theology, oral instructions and explanations of the Professor, 
the preparation and reading Theses by the students upon the topics under 
discussion, and finally review recitations npon the whole. The design is to 
combine, as far as may be, the assistance of the living teacher, with the cul- 
tivation of the powers of memory, comparison, judgment, reasoning and ex- 
pression, by the researches of the students themselves, and to fix the know- 
ledge acquired, by repeated views of it. When a " head " of divinity is 
approached, the first step which our Professor takes, is to propound to us, 
upon the black-board, a short, comprehensive syllabus, of its discussion, in 
the form of questions ; the whole prefaced by a suitable lesson in the text-book. 
Our first business is to master and recite this lesson. Having thus gotten, 
from our standard author, a trustworthy outline of the discussion, we pro- 
ceed next, to investigate the same subject, as time allows, in other writers, 
both friendly and hostile, preliminary to the composition of a thesis. It is 
to guide this research, that the syllabus, with its numerous references to 
books, has been given us. These have been carefully selected by the Profes- 
sor, so as to direct to the ablest and most thorough accessible authors, who 
defend and impugn the truth. The references may, in many cases, be far more 
numerous than any Seminary-student can possibly read, at the time, with the 
duties of the other departments upon his hands. To guide his selection, 
therefore, the most important authority is named first, under each ques- 
tion, (it may be from our text-book, or from some other,) then the next in 
value, and last, those others which the student may consult with profit at 
his greater leisure. This syllables with its references we find one of the 
most valuable features of our course ; it guides not only our first investiga- 
tions, but those of subsequent years, when the, exigencies of our pastoral 
work may require us to return and make a wider research into the same 
subject. It directs our inquiries intelligently, and rescues us from the drudg- 
ery of wading through masses of literary rubbish to find the opinions of 
the really influential minds, by giving us some of the experience of one older 
than ourselves, whose duty it has been made to examine many books upon 
theology and its kindred sciences. 

(3) 



4 NOTE TO THE HEADER. 

After the results of our own research have been presented, it has been 
Dr. Dabney's usage to declare his own view of the whole subject; and 
these lectures form the mass of what is printed below. They take the form 
therefore of resumes of the discussion already seen in the books ; oftentimes 
reciting in plainer or fresher shape even the arguments of the text-book 
itself, when the previous examination has revealed the fact that the class 
have had difficulty in grasping them, and often reproducing the views to 
which the other references of the syllabus had already directed us. It needs 
hardly to be added that the Professor of course made no pretense of origi- 
nality, save in the mode of connecting, harmonizing, or refuting some of the 
statements passed in review. Indeed, it seemed ever to be his aim to show 
us how to get for ourselves, in advance of his help, all the things to which in 
his final lecture he assisted us. These lectures being henceforth in the 
hands of the classes, will take the place of a subordinate text-book, along 
with the others ; and the time formerly devoted to their oral delivery will 
be applied to giving us the fruits of other researches in advance of the exist- 
ing course. 

It only remains that we indicate the order of subjects. This is chiefly 
that observed in the Confession of Faith. But the course begins with Nat- 
ural Theology, which is then followed by a brief review of the doctrines of 
psychology and ethicks, which are most involved in the study of theology. 
This being done, the lectures proceed to revealed theology, assuming, as a 
postulate established by another department in the Seminary, the inspira- 
tion and infallibility of the Scriptures. 

The form in which the Lectures are presented to our comrades is dictated 
by the necessity of having them issued from the press weekly, in order to 
meet our immediate wants in the progress of the course. It needs only be 
said in conclusion that this printing is done by Dr. Dabney's consent. 

COMMITTEE OF PRINTING. 



LECTURES. 



NATURAL THEOLOQY. 



LECTUEB I. 

PREFATORY, AND EXISTENCE OF GOD. 

SYLLABUS. 

1. "What is Theology, and what its divisions ? Prove that there is a science of 
Natural Theology. 

Consult Turrettin, Loc. I, Que. 2, 3. Dick, Lect. 1. 

2. "What the two lines of argument to prove the existence of a God ? What 
the a priori arguments ? Are they valid ? 

Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrse, Bk. Ill, ch. 1. Dr. Samuel Clarke, Dis- 
course of the Beins and Attributes of God, § 1 to 12. Chalmer's Nat. 
Theol., Lect. 3. Dick, Lect. 16. Cudworth's Intellect. System. 

3. State the argument of Clarke. Of Howe. Are they sound ? Are they a 
priori ? 

Locke's Essay, Bk, IV, ch. 10. Dr. S. Clarke, as above. Howe's Living 

Temple, Ch. II, § 9 to end. 
i. State the arguments of Breckinridge's Theology. Is it valid ? 

Knowledge of God. Objective, Bk.I, Ch. 5. 
5. Give an outline of the argument from design. 

Paley's Natural Theology, Ch. 1, 2, 3. Xenophon's Memorabilia, Lib. 

I, ch. 4. Cicero, de Natura Deorum, Lib. II, § 2-8. Turrettin, Loc. 

Ill, Que. 1. Theological treatises generally. 

Theology, What 1 — It is justly said : Every science should begin 
by defining its terms, in order to shun verbal fallacies. The word 
Theology, (theou logos), has undergone peculiar mutations, in the his- 
tory of science. The Greeks often used it for their theories of theogony 
and cosmogony. Aristotle uses it in a more general form, as equiva- 
lent to all metaphisics : dividing theoretical philosophy into physical, 
mathematical, and theological. Many of the early Christian fathers 
used it in the restricted sense of the doctrine of Christ's divinity : 
(scil. Ioannes 'o theologos). But it has now come to be used com- 
monly, to describe the whole science of God's being and nature, and 
relations to the creature. The name is appropriate : ' Science of God.' 
Th. Aquinas : " Theologia a Deo docetur, Deum docet, ad Deum ducit." 
God its author, its subject, its end. 

Its Divisions. — The distribution of Theology into didactic, polemic, 
and practical is sufficiently known. Now, all didactic inculcation of 
truth is indirect refutation of the opposite error. Polemic Theology 
has been defined as direct refutation of error. The advantage of 
this has been supposed to be, that the way for easiest and most thorough 

(5) 



6 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

refutation is to systematize the error, with reference to its first principle, 
or proton pseudos. But the attempt to form a science of polemics, 
different from Didactic Theology fails ; because error never has true 
method. Confusion is its characteristic. The system of discussion, 
formed on its false method, cannot be scientific. Hence, separate trea- 
tises on polemics have usually slidden into the methods of didactics ; 
or they have been confused. Again : Indirect refutation is often more 
effectual than direct. There is therefore, in this course, no separate 
polemic ; but what is said against errors is divided between the histo- 
rical, and didactic. 

Is there a Natural Theology? — Theology is divided into natural 
and revealed, according to the sources of our knowledge of it ; from natu- 
ral reason; from revelation. What is science? Knowledge demon- 
strated and methodized. That there is a science of Natural Theology 
of at least some certain and connected propositions, although limited, 
and insufficient for salvation at best, is well argued from Scripture, e. 
g. Ps. xix: 1-7. Acts xiv : 15; or xvii : 23. Rom. i: 19; ii : 
14, &c; and from the fact that nearly all heathens have religious ideas, 
and rites of worship. Not that religious ideas are innate ; but the 
capacity to establish some such ideas, from natural data, is innate. 
Consider further: Is not this capacity implied in man's capacity to re- 
ceive a revealed theology 1 Does revelation demonstrate God's exis- 
tence ; or assume it 1 Does it rest the first truths on pure dogmatism, 
or on evidence which man apprehends 1 ? The latter; and then man is 
assumed to have some natural capacity for such apprehension. But if 
nature reflects any light concerning God, (as Scripture asserts,) then 
man is capable of deriving some theology from nature. 

Why Denied? — Some old divines were wont to deny that.there was 
any science of Natural Theology, and to say that without revelation 
man would not naturally learn its first truth. They attribute the 
grains of truth mixed with the various polytheisms to the* rem- 
nants of tradition descending from Noah's family. They urge that 
some secluded tribes, Hottentots, Australians, have no religious ideas ; 
that some men are sincere atheists after reflection ; and that there is 
the wildest variety, yea contradiction, between the different schools of 
heathens. These divines seem to fear lest, by granting a Natural The- 
ology, they should grant too much to natural reason ; a fear ungrounded 
and extreme. They are in danger of a worse consequence ; reducing 
man's capacity for receiving divine verities so low, that the rational 
skeptick will be able to turn upon them, and say : " Then, by so inept 
a creature, the guarantees of a true revelation cannot be certainly 
apprehended." 

Proof. — To reply more in detail; I grant much influence to prime- 
val traditions, (a subject of great interest learnedly discussed in Theo. 
Gale's Court of the Gentiles.) But that so inconstant a cause is able 
to perpetuate in men these fixed convictions of the invisible, shows in 
man a natural religious capacity. That there have been atheistic per- 
sons and tribes, is inconclusive. Some tribes deduce no science of 
geometry, statics, or even numbers ; but this does not prove man non- 
logical. Some profess to disbelieve axioms, as Hume that of causation, 
but this is far from proving man incapable of a natural science of in- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. ? 

duction. Besides, the atheism of these tribes is doubtful ; savages are 
shrewd, suspicious, and fond of befooling inquisitive strangers by 
assumed stupidity. And last ; the differences of Natural Theology 
among polytheists are a diversity in unity ; all involve the prime 
truths ; a single first cause, responsibility, guilt, a future life, future 
rewards and punishments. 

Existence of God. — 2. The first truth of theology is the existence 
of G-od. Divines have attempted to prove this rationally by two 
modes of argument, the a priori and a posteriori. The latter infers a 
God by reasoning backwards from effects to cause. The former should 
accordingly mean reasoning downwards from cause to effect ; the mean- 
ing attached to the phrase by Aristotle and his followers. But now the 
term a priori reasoning is used, in this connexion, to denote conclusions 
gained without the aid of experience, from the primary judgments, and 
especially, the attempt to infer the truth of a notion, directly from its 
nature or condition in the mind. 

A Priori Argument. What, and by Whom Urged 1 — It appears 
to be common among recent writers (as Dick, Chalmers' Natural The- 
ology) to charge Dr. Samuel Clarke as the chief assertor of the a priori 
argument among Englishmen. This is erroneous. It may be more 
correctly said to have been first intimated by Epicurus (whose atomic 
theory excluded the a posteriori argument ;) as appears from a curious 
passage in Cicero, de natura Deorum, Lib. I, c. 16. It was more articu- 
lately stated by the celebrated Des Cartes in his Meditations ; and nat- 
uralized to the English mind rather by Bishop Stillingfleet, than by Dr. 
Clarke. The student may find a very distinct statement of it in the 
Origines Sacrce of the former, book III, chapter I, § 14 ; while Dr. 
Clarke, § 8 of his Discourse, expressly says that the personal intelli- 
gence of God must be proved a posteriori, and not a priori. But Des 
Cartes having founded his psychology on the two positions: 1st. Cogi- 
to ; ergo sum; and 2nd, The Ego is spirit, not matter ; proceeds to ask : 
Among all the ideas in the consciousness, how shall the true be distin- 
guished from the false, seeing all are obviously, not consistent 1 As to 
primary ideas, his answer is ; by the clearness with which they com- 
mend themselves to our consciousness as immediate truths. Now, 
among our ideas, no other is so clear and unique as that of & first 
"Cause, eternal and infinite. Hence we may immediately accept it as 
consciously true. Moreover, that we have this idea of a G-od proves 
there must be a Grod ; because were there none, the rise of His idea in 
our thought could not be accounted for; just as the idea of triangles 
implies the existence of some triangle. Now the a priori argument of 
Stillingfleet is but a specific application of Des Cartes' method. We 
find, says he, that in thinking a God we must think Him as eternal, self- 
existent, and necessarily existent. But since we indisputably do think 
a God, it is impossible but that God is. Since necessary existence is 
unavoidably involved in our idea of a God, therefore His existence must 
necessarily be granted. 

Its Defect. — Now, surely this process is not necessarily inconclu- 
sive, because it is a priori ; there are processes, in which we validly 
determine the truth of a notion by simple inspection of its contents 
and conditions. But the defect of Stillingfleet's reasoning is, that it 



8 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

does not give the correct account of our thought. If the student will 
inspect the two propositions, which form an enthymeme, he will see that 
the conclusion depends on this assumption, as its major premise : That 
we can have no idea in our consciousness, for which there is not an an- 
swering objective reality. (This is, obviously, the assumed major t 
because without it the enthymeme can only contain the conditional con- 
clusion, that God, if there is one, necessarily exists.) But that major 
premise is, notoriously, not universally true. 

A Posteriori Argument of Dr. S. Clarke. — Now, instead of say- 
ing that Dr. Clarke's method in the Discourse of the Being, &c, of 
God, is the a priori, it is more correct to say (with Hamilton's Reid) 
that it is an a posteriori argument, inferring the existence of G-od from His 
effects ; but disfigured at one or two points by useless Cartesian elements. 
His first position is : Since something now exists, something has existed 
from eternity. This, you will find, is the starting-point of the argument, 
with all reasoners ; and it is solid. For if, at any time in the past eternity, 
there had been absolutely nothing, since nothing cannot be a cause of 
existence, time and space must have remained forever blank of existence. 
Hence, 2d., argues Dr. Clarke : there has been, from eternity, some 
immutable and independent Being : because an eternal succession of 
dependent beings, without independent first cause, is impossible. 3d. 
This Being, as independent eternally, must be self-existent, that is,, 
necessarily existing. For its eternal independence shows that the 
spring, or causative source of its existence could not be outside of 
itself; it is therefore within itself forever. But the only true idea of 
such self-existence is, that the idea of its non-existence would be an 
express contradiction. And here, Dr. Clarke very needlessly adds : 
our notion that the existence is necessary proves that it cannot but ex- 
ist. He reasons also : our conceptions of infinite time and infinite space 
are necessary : we cannot but think them. But they are not substance : 
they are only modes of substance. Unless some substance exists of 
which they are modes, they cannot exist, and so, would not be thought. 
Hence, there must be an infinite and eternal substance. 4th. The sub- 
stance of this Being is not comprehensible by us : but this does not 
make the evidence for its existence less certain. For, 5th. Several of 
its attributes are demonstrable ; as that it must be. 6th. Infinite and 
omnipresent. 7th. That it must be One. And 8th. That it must be 
intelligent and free, &c. The conclusion is, that this Being must be 
Creator and God, unless the universe can itself fulfil the conditions of 
eternity, necessary self-existence, infinitude, and intelligence and free 
choice. This is Pantheism : which he shows cannot be true. 

Clarke's Argument valid, because in the main a posteriori. — 
On this argument as a whole, I remark, that it is in the main valid, 
because it is in the main aposteriori: it appeals to the intuitive judg- 
ment of cause, to infer from finite effects an infinite first Cause. The 
Cartesian features attached to the 3d proposition are excrescences : but 
we may remove them, and leave the chain adamantine. We will prune 
them away, not for the reasons urged by Dr. Chalmers, which are in 
several particulars as invalid as Dr. Clarke ; but for the reason al- 
ready explained on page 7. I only add, it seems to me inaccurate 
to argue that time and space can only be conceived by us as modes of 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. & 

substance ; and therefore infinite and eternal Substance must exist. 
The truth here is : that we cannot conceive of finite substance or 
events, without placing it in time and space ; a different proposition 
from Dr. Clarke's. 

Howe's Demonstation. — 3. I think we have the metaphysical argu- 
ment for the being of a Grod, stated in a method free from these objec- 
tions, by the great Puritan divine, John Howe. He flourished about 
1650, A. D., and prior to Dr. Clarke. See his Living Temple, chapter 
II. He begins thus: 1. Since we now exist, something has existed 
from eternity. 2. Hence, at least, some uncaused Being , for the eternal 
has nothing prior to it. 8. Hence some independent Being. 4. Hence 
that Being exists necessarily; for its independent, eternal, inward 
spring of existence cannot be conceived as possibly at any time inope- 
rative. 5. This Being must be self-active; active; because if other 
beings did not spring from its action, they must all be eternal, and so 
independent, and necessary, which things are impossible for beings va- 
riously organized and changeable ; and se£/-active, because in eternity 
nothing was before Him to prompt His action. 6. This Being is living ; 
for self-prompted activity is our very idea of life. 7. He is of bound- 
less intelligence, power, freedom, &c. 

What needed to complete it 1— This argument is in all parts well 
knit. But it is obviously a posteriori; for all depends from a simple 
deduction, from a universe of effects, back to their cause ; and in the- 
same way are inferred the properties of that cause. The only place 
where the argument needs completion, is at the fifth step. So far forth, 
the proof is perfect, that some eternal, uncaused, necessary being 
exists. But how do we prove that this One created all other beings 1 
The answer is : these others must all be either eternal or temporal. 
If they are all eternal, then all are uncaused, independent, self-exist- 
ent, and necessary. This we shall see is Pantheism. If the rest are 
temporal, then they were all caused, but by what 1 Either by the one un- 
caused, eternal Being ; or by other similar temporal beings generating 
them. But the latter is the theory of an infinite, independent series of 
finite organisms each one dependent. When therefore, we shall have 
stopped these two breaches, by refuting Pantheism and the hypothesis 
of infinite series, the demonstration will be perfect. 

View of Plato. — Now Platonism held that all substance is uncaused 
and eternal, as to its being. All finite rational spirits are, said this 
theology, emanations of the to 'on, the eternal intelligence ; and all 
matter has been from eternity, in the state of inert, passive, chaotic 'ule» 
It referred all organization, fashioning the only creation it admitted, 
and change, however, either directly or indirectly, to the intelligent 
first Cause. This scheme does not seem easily refuted by natural rea- 
son. Let it be urged that the very notion of the first Cause implies its 
singleness ; and more solidly, that the unity of plan and working seen 
in nature points to only a single ultimate cause ; Plato could reply, that 
he made only one first Cause ; for 'ule is inert ; and only the recipient 
of causation. Let that rule be urged, which Hamilton calls his " law 
of parsimony ;" that hypotheses must include nothing more than is 
necessary to account for the phenomena ; Plato could say : No ; the 
reason as much demands the supposition of a material pre-existing, as 



10 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

of an almighty Workman ; for even omnipotence cannot work, with 
nothing to work on. Indeed, so far as I know, all human systems, 
Plato's, Epicurus,' Zeno's, Pytbagoras,' the Peripatetic, had this com- 
mon feature ; that it is self-evident, substance cannot rise out of nihil 
into esse- that ex nihilo nihil fit. And we shall see how obstinate is 
the tendency of philosophy to relapse to this maxim, in the instances of 
Spinoza's Pantheism, and Kant's and Hamilton's theory of causation. 
Indeed it may be doubted whether the human mind, unaided by reve- 
lation, would ever have advanced farther than this. It was from an 
accurate knowledge of the history of philosophy, that the apostle 
declared, (Hebrews xi : 3) the doctrine of an almighty creation out of 
nothing is one of pure faith. 

Can the Platonic Doctrine of the Eternity of all Substances 
be refuted bv reason? — Dr. Clarke, as you saw, does indeed attempt a 
rational argument that the eternity of matter is impossible. The eter- 
nal must be necessary ; hence an eternal cause must necessarily be. 
So, that which can possibly be thought as existing and yet not neces- 
sary, cannot be eternal. Such is his logic. I think inspection will 
show you a double defect. The first enthymeme, as we saw (p. 8) is not 
conclusive ; and the second, even if the first were true, would be only 
inferring the converse ; which is not necessarily conclusive. 

Howe states a more plausible argument, at which Dr. Clarke also 
glances. Were matter eternal, it must needs be necessary. But then it 
must be ubiquitious, homogeneous, immutable, like Grod's substance; be- 
cause this inward eternal necessity of being cannot but act always and 
everywhere alike. Whereas we see matter diverse, changing and only 
in parts of space. I doubt whether this is solid ; or whether from the 
mere postulate of necessary existence, we can infer anything more than 
Spinoza does ; that eternal matter can possibly exist in no other organ- 
isms and sequences of change, than those in which it actually exists. 
Our surest refutation of this feature of Platonism is God's word. This 
heathen theology is certainly nearest of any to the Christian, here, and 
less repugnant than any other, to the human reason and Grod's honour. 

Breckinridge's Demonstration. — 4. Dr. R. J.Breckinridge, (vol. 
I, p. 56, &c.,) constructs what he assures us, is an argument of his own, 
for the being of a G-od. A brief inspection of it will illustrate the 
subject. 1. Because something now is — at least the mind that rea- 
sons — therefore something eternal is. 2. All known substance is mat- 
ter or spirit. 3. Hence only three possible alternatives; either, a.) 
some matter is eternal ; and the source of all spirit and all other 
matter. Or, b.) some being combined of matter and spirit is the eter- 
nal one, and source of all other matter and spirit. Or, c.) some spirit 
is eternal, and produced all other spirit and matter. The third hypothe- 
sis must be the true one ; not the second ; because we are matter and 
spirit combined, and consciously, cannot create ; and moreover the first 
Cause must be single. Not the first, because matter is inferior to mind ; 
and the inferior does not produce the superior. 

Its Defects. — The objections to this structure begin at the second 
part, where the author leaves the established forms of Howe and Clarke. 
First : the argument cannot apply, in the mind of a pure idealist, or 
of a materialist. Second : it is not rigidly demonstrated that there 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. ll 

can be no substance but matter and spirit ; all that can be done is to 
say negatively, that no other is known to us. Third : the three alter- 
native propositions do not exhaust the. case ; the Pantheists and the 
Peripatetic, of eternal organization, show us that others are conceiva- 
ble, as obviously does Platonic. Fourth : that we, combined of mat- 
ter and spirit, consciously cannot create, is short of proof that some 
higher being thus constituted cannot. Christ could create, if He 
pleased : He is thus constituted. Last : it is unfortunate that an argu- 
ment, which aims to be so experimental, should have the analogy of 
our natural experience so much against it. For we only witness human 
spirits producing effects, when incorporate. As soon as they are dis- 
embodied, (at death,) they totally cease to be observed causes of any 
effects. 

Teleological Argument. — 5. The teleological argument for the 
being and attributes of a God has been so well stated by Paley, in his 
Natural Theology, that though as old as Job and Socrates, it is usually 
mentioned as Paley's argument. I refer you especially to his first 
three chapters. Beginning from the instance of a peasant finding a 
watch on a common, and although not knowing how it came there, con- 
cluding that some intelligent agent constructed it ; he applies the same 
argument, with great beauty and power, to show that man and the uni- 
verse have a Maker. For we see everywhere intelligent arrangements ; 
as the eye for seeing, the ear for hearing, &c, &c. Nor is the peasant's 
reasoning to a watch-maker weakened, because he never saw one at 
work, or even heard of one ; nor because a part of the structure is not 
understood ; nor because some of the adjustments are seen to be im- 
perfect ; nor, if you showed the peasant, in the watch a set of wheels 
for reproducing its kind, would he be satisfied that there was no watch- 
maker? for he would see that this reproductive mechanism could 
not produce the intelligent arrangements. Nor would he be satisfied 
with a " law of nature," or a physical principle of order, as the sole 
cause. 

Are the two rival lines of proof ? — It is a fact somewhat curious, 
that the metaphysical and the teleological arguments have each had their 
exclusive advocates in modern times. The applauders of Paley join 
Dr. Thomas Brown in scouting the former as shadowy and inconclusive. 
The supporters of the metaphysical divines depreciate Paley, as lead- 
ing us to nothing above a mere Demiurgus. In truth both lines of reas- 
oning are valid, and each needs the other. Dr. Brown, for instance, in 
carrying Paley's argument to its higher conclusions, must tacitly borrow 
some of the very metaphysics which he professes to disdain. Otherwise 
it remains incomplete, and leads to no more than a sort of Artifex 
3Iundi, whose existence is run back merely to a date prior to human 
experience, and whose being, power and wisdom are demonstrated to 
extend only so far as man's inquiries have gone. But that He is eternal, 
immutable, independent, immense, infinite in power or wisdom, 
it can never assure us. True, in viewing the argument, your mind 
did leap to the conclusion that the artificer of nature's contrivances is 
the Being of "eternal power and godhead;" but it was only because 
you passed, almost unconsciously perhaps, through that metaphysical 
deduction of which Howe gives us the exact description. Howe's is the 



12 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

comprehensive, Paley's the partial (but very lucid) display of the a 
'posteriori argument. Paley's premise ; that every contrivance must 
have an intelligent contriver, is but an instance under the more general 
one, that every effect must have a cause. The inadequacy of Paley's 
argument may be illustrated in this; that he seems to think the 
peasant's discovery of a stone, instead of a watch, could not have led 
his mind to the same conclusion, whereas a pebble as really, though 
not so impressively, suggests a cause, as an organized thing. For even 
the pebble should make us think either that it is such as can have the 
ground of its existence in its present form in itself; and so, can be eter- 
nal, self-existent, and necessary ; or else that it had a Producer, who 
does possesss these attributes. 

Value of the Teleological Argument. — But, on the other hand,, 
this argument from contrivance has great value, for these reasons. It is 
plain and popular. It enables us to evince the unity of the first causes 
through the unity of purpose and convergence of the consequences of 
creation. It aids us in showing the personality of G-od, as a being of 
intelligence and will ; and it greatly strengthens the assault we shall be 
enabled to make on Pantheism, by showing, unless there is a personal and 
divine first Cause prior to the universe, this must itself be, not only 
measured, eternal, independent, necessarily existent, but endued with 
intelligence. 



LECTURE II. 



SYLLABUS. 
EXISTENCE OP GOD* (continued.) 

1. Show, in a few instances, how the argument from design may be drawn from 
animal organisms, from man's mental and emotional structure, and from the adapt- 
ation of matter to our mental faculties. See Paley, Natural Theology, bk. iv- 

ch. 3. 16. 

Chalmer's Natural Theology, bk. iv, ch. 1, 2. Bk. iv, ch. 5. 

2. Can the being of God be argued from the existence of conscience ? Tur- 

rettin, Loc. iii. Que. 1. §14, 15. Alexander's Moral Science, ch. 12. 
Chalmer's Natural Theology, bk. iii, ch. 2. Charnock, Attr. Discourse i, 
§3. 

3. Can any sound argument be drawn from the Consensus Populorum ? Tur- 

retin, Loc. iii, Qne. 1, §16—18. Dick, Lee. 17. Cicero de JSatura Deo- 
rum, lib. i. Charnock on Attr., Discourse i, §1. 

4. Refute the evasion of Hume that the universe is a singular effect. Alexan- 

der's Moral Science, ch. 28. Chalmer's Natural Theology, bk. i. ch. 4. 
Watson's Theolgical Inst. Pt. ii, ch. 1. 

5. Can the universe be accounted for, without a Creator, as an infinite series of 
temporal effects ? Turrettin, Loc. iii, Que. 1, § 6, 7. Alexander's Moral Science, 

ch. 28. Dr. S. Clarke, Discouse, § 2. 

6. Refute the pantheistic scheme of the universe. Alexander's Moral Science, 

ch. 28. Chalmers' Natural Theology, bk. i, ch. 5. Dr. S. Clarke, Dis- 
course, § 3, 7, 9, &c. 

1. Instances of Contrivance to an End. — To resume : A single 
instance of intelligent contrivance in the works of creation would prove 
an intelligent Creator. Yet, it is well to multiply these proofs, even 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 13 

largely : for they give us then a wider foundation of deduction, stronger 
views of the extent of the creative wisdom and power; and better evi- 
dence of God's unity. 

From Organs of Animals. — Hence, as instances, showing how the 
argument is constructed : If the design is to produce the physical part 
of the sensation of vision; the eye is obviously an optical instrument, 
contrived with lenses to refract, expedients for obtaining an achromatic 
spectrum, adjustments for distance and quantity of light, and protec- 
tion of the eye, by situation, bony socket, brow, lids, lubricating fluids; 
and in birds, the nicticating membrane. Different creatures also have 
eyes adapted to their lives and media of vision; as birds, cats, owls, 
fishes. So, the ear is an auditory apparatus, with a concha to converge 
the sound-waves, a tube, a tympanum to transmit vibration, the three 
bones {malleus, stipes and incus) in instable equilibrium, to convey it 
to the sensorium, &c. 

From spiritual Structure of Man. — The world of spirit is just 
as full of evident contrivances. See (e. g.) the laws of habit and imita- 
tion, exactly adjusted to educate, and to form the character; and the 
faculties of memory, association, taste, &c. The evidences of contri- 
vance are, if possible, still more beautiful in our emotional structure ; 
e. g. in the instincts of parental love, sympathy, resentment and its 
natural limits, sexual love, and its natural check, modesty; and above 
all, conscience, with its self-approval and remorse. All these are ad- 
adjusted to obvious ends. 

In Arrangements for compensating defects. — We see marks of 
more recondite design, in the natural compensations for necessary de- 
fects. The elephant's short neck is made up by a lithe proboscis. 
Bird's heads cannot carry teeth : but they have a gizzard. Insects with 
fixed heads, have a number of eyes to see around them. Brutes have 
less reason, but more instinct ; &c, &c. 

From designed Adaptations. — The adaptations of one department 
of nature to another show at once contrivance, selecting will, and 
unity of mind. Thus, the media and the organs of sense are made for 
each other. The forms and colours of natural objects are so related to 
taste ; the degree of fertility imparted to the earth, to man's necessity 
for labour ; the stability of physical law, to the necessary judgments 
of the reason thereabout. So all nature, material and spiritual, ani- 
mal, vegetable, inorganic, on our planet, in the starry skies, are full of 
wise contrivance. 

2. Conscience proves there is a God. — The moral phenomena of 
conscience present a twofold evidence for the being of a God, worthy 
of fuller illustration than space allows. This faculty is a most inge- 
nious spiritual contrivance, adjusted to a beneficent end : viz., the pro- 
motion of virtuous acts, and repression of wicked. As such, it proves 
a contriver, just as any organic adjustment does. But second : we shall 
find, later in the course, that our moral judgments are intuitive, prim- 
itive, and necessary ; the most inevitable functions of the reason. Now, 
the idea of our acts which have rightness is unavoidably attended with 
the judgment that they are obligatory. Obligation must imply an 
obliger. This is not always any known creature : hence, the Creator. 
Again, our conscience of wrong doing unavoidably suggests fear ; but 



14 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

fear implies an avenger. The secret sinner, the imperial sinner above 
all creature-power, shares this dread. Now, one may object, that this pro- 
cess is not valid, unless we hold God's mere will the sole source of 
moral distinctions; which we do not teach, since an atheist is reason- 
ably compelled to hold them. But the objection is not just. The 
primitive law of the reason must be accepted as valid to us, whatever 
its source. For parallel: The intuitive belief in causation is found on in- 
spection, to contain the propostion, 'There is a first Cause.' But in order 
for the validity of this proposition, it is not necessary for us to say that 
this intuition is God's arbitrary implantation. It is intrinsically true 
to the nature of things ; and the argument to a first Cause therefore 
only the more valid. 

This moral argument to the being of a God, as it is immediate and 
strictly logical, is doubtless far the most practical. Its force is seen 
in this, that theoretical atheists, in danger and death, usually at the 
awakening of remorse, acknowledge God. 

8. Argument from Universal Consent. — You find the argument 
from the Consensus Populorum, much elaborated by your authorities. 
I conclude that it gives a strong probable evidence for the being of a 
God, thus : The truth is abstract ; its belief would not have been 
so nearly universal, nor so obviously essential to man's social existence 
did not a valid ground for it exist in man's laws of thought. For it 
can be accounted for neither by fear, policy nor self-interest. 

4. Objected, that Contrivance betrays Limitation. — From the 
affirmative argument, we return to evasions. An objection is urged, 
that the argument from design, if valid, proves only a creator of limi- 
ted powers. For contrivance is the expedient of weakness. E. g. one 
constructs a derrick, because he is too weak to lift the mass as a Samp- 
son. If the Creator has eternal power and godhead, why did he not go 
straight to His ends, without means, as in Ps. 33 : 9 ? I answer, design 
proves a designer, though in part unintelligible. 2nd r It would not be 
unworthy of the Almighty to choose this manner of working, in order 
to leave His signature on it for man to read. 3d. Chiefly: Had God 
employed no means to ends, he must have remained the only agent ; 
there would have been no organized nature ; but only the one superna- 
tural agent. 

Hume Objects that the World is a Singular Effect. — Hume 
strives to undermine the argument from the creation to a Creator, by 
urging, that since experience only teaches us the uniformity of the tie 
between effect and cause, it is unwarranted to apply it farther than 
experience goes with us. But no one has had any experience of a 
world-maker, as we have of making implements in the arts. The uni- 
verse, if an effect at all, is one wholly singular ; the only one anybody 
has known, and from the earliest human experience, substantially as it 
is now. Hence the empirical induction to its first Cause is unauthorized . 

Dr. Alexander's Answer. — Note first : this is from the same mint 
with his argument against miracles. Creation is simply the first mir- 
acle ; the same objection is in substance brought ; viz : no testimony 
can be weighty enough to prove against universal experience, that a 
miracle has occurred. Next, Dr. Alexander, to rebut, resorts to an 
illustraraion ; a country boy who had seen only ploughs and horse-carts, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 15 

is shown a steam-frigate ; yet he immediately infers a mechanic for it. 
The fact will he so ; hut it will not give us the whole analysis. True the 
frigate is greatly larger and more complicated than a horse-cart; (as 
the universe is than any human machine). But still Hume might urge 
that the boy would see a thousand empirical marks, cognizable to his 
experiences, (timber with marks of the plane on it, as on his plough- 
beam, the cable as evidently twisted of hemp, as his plough-lines ; the 
huge anchor with as evident dints of the hammer, as his plough-share,) 
which taught him that the wonderful ship was also a produced mechan- 
ism. Astonishing as it is to him, compared with the plough, it is 
experimentally seen to be not natural, like the universe. 

Chalmers' Answer. — Chalmers, in a chapter full of contradictions, 
seems to grant that experience alone teaches us the law of causation, 
and asserts that still the universe is not "a singular effect." To show this, 
he supposes with Paley, the peasant from a watch inferring a watch-ma- 
ker : and then by a series of abstractions, he shows that the logical 
basis of the inference is not anything peculiar to that watch, as that it 
is a gold, or a silver, a large, a small, or a good watch, or a machine 
to measure time at all ; but simply the fact that it is a manifest contri- 
vance for an end. The effect then, is no longer singular ; yet the infer- 
ence to some adequate agent holds. To this ingenious process Hume 
would object, that it is experience alone which guides in making those 
successive abstactions, by which we separate the accidental from the 
essential effect and cause. This, Chalmers himself admits. Hence, as 
we have no experience of world-making, no such abstraction is here- 
allowable, to reduce the world to the class of common effects. Besides; 
has Hume admitted that it is an effect at all 1 In fine, he might urge 
this difference, that the world is native, while the watch, the plough, 
the ship bears, to the most unsophisticated observer, empirical marks 
of being made, and not native. 

True Answer. — Let us not then refute Hume from his own premises; 
for they are false. It is not experience which teaches us, that every 
effect has its cause, but the a priori reason. (This Chalmers first as- 
serts, and then unwisely surrenders.) Neither child nor man believes 
that maxim to be true in the hundredth case, because he has expe- 
rienced its truth in ninty-nine ; he instinctively believed it in 
the first case. It is not a true canon of inductive logic, that the tie 
of cause and effect can be asserted only so far as experience proves its 
presence. If it were, would induction ever teach us anything we did not 
know before ? Would there be any inductive science ] Away with the 
nonsense ! Grant that the world is "a singular effect." It is a phenom- 
enon, it could not be without a cause of its being, either extrinsic, or 
intrinsic. And this we know, not by experience, but by one of those 
primitive judgments of the reason, which alone make experience intel- 
ligible and valid. 

Can the Present Universe be the result of an Infinite Series 
of Organisms? 5. — But may not this universe have the ground of 
its being in itself? This is another evasion of the atheists. Grant, 
they say, that nothing cannot produce something. Theists go out- 
side the universe to seek its cause ; and when they suppose they have 
found it in a God, they are unavoidably driven to represent Him as 



16 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

uncaused from without, eternal, self-existent, and necessary. Now it 
is a simpler hopythesis, just to suppose that the universe which we see, 
is the uncaused, eternal, self-existent, necessary Being. Why may we 
not adopt it 1 Seeing we must run back to the mystery of some un- 
caused, eternal being, why may we not accept the obvious teaching of 
nature and experience, and conclude that this is it? Since the organ- 
isms which adorn this universe are all temporal, and since the earth 
and other stars move in temporal cycles, we shall then have to suppose 
that the infinite past eternity, through which this self-existent universe 
has existed, was made up of an infinite succession of these organisms 
and cycles, each previous one producing the next : as the infinite future 
eternity which will be. But what is absurd in such a hypothesis'? 

Metaphysical Answers Invalid. — Now I will not reply, with Dr. 
Clarke and others, that if the universe is eternal it must be necessary ; 
and this necessity must make its substance homogeneous and unchange- 
able throughout infinite time and space. It might be plausibly re- 
torted, that this tendency to regular, finite organisms, which we see, 
was the very necessity of nature inherent in matter. Nor does it seem 
to me solid to say, with Robert Hall in his sermon, Turrettin, and 
others, that an eternal series of finite durations is impossible ; because 
if each particular part had a beginning, while the series had none, we 
should have the series existing before its first member; the chain 
stretching farther back than its farthest link. The very supposition 
was, that the series had no first member. Is a past eternity any more 
impossible to be made up of the addition of an infinite number of 
finite parts, than an abstract infinite future? Surely not. Now there 
is to be just such an infinite future : namely, your and my immortality, 
which, although it may not be measured by solar days and years, will 
undoubtedly be composed of parts of successive time infinitely multi- 
plied. But to this future eternity, it would be exactly parallel to 
object, that we make each link in it have an end, while the whole 
is endless ; which would involve the same absudity, of a chain ex- 
tended forward after the last link was ended. The answer again is : 
that according to the supposition, there is no last link, the number 
thereof being infinite. In a word, what mathematician does not know 
that infinitude may be generated by the addition of finites repeated an 
infinite number of times ; and that two proper infinites may be une- 
qual 1 These simple remarks, I think, suggest the refutation of Tur- 
rettin's useless metaphysics (S. 7-9.) on this subject. 

True Answers. — The true answers to the atheistic hypothesis are 
these : 

(1.) Take any line of generative organisms, for instance : (oak trees 
bearing acorns, and those acorns rearing oaks, e. g.) the being of 
each individual in the series demands an adequate cause. When we 
push the inquiry back one step, and ask the cause of the parent which 
(seemingly) caused it, we find precisely the same difficulty unanswered. 
Whatever distance we run back along the line, we clearly see no ap- 
proach is made towards finding the adequate cause of the series, or of 
the earliest individual considered. Hence it is wholly unreasonable to 
suppose that the introduction of infinitude into the series helps to 
give us an adequate cause. We only impose on ourselves with an unde- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 17 

ifined idea. Paley's illustration here is as just as beautiful. Two 
straight parrallel lines pursued ever so far, make no approximation ; 
they will never meet though infinitely extended. 

(2.) An adequate cause existing at the time the phenomenon arises, 
must be assigned for every effect. For a cause not present at the rise 
of the effect is no cause. Now then ; when a given oak was sprouted 
all the previous oaks and acorns of its line save one or two had perished. 
"Was this acorn, even with its parent oak, the adequate cause of the 
whole structure of the young tree, including the ingenious contrivances 
thereof? Surely not. But the previous dead oaks and acorns are no 
cause ; for they are not there. An absent cause is no cause. The 
original cause of this oak is not in the series at all. 

(3.) Even if we permit ourselves to be dazzled with the notion that 
somehow the infinitude of the series can account for its self-productive 
power ; this maxim is obvious : that in a series of transmitted causes 
the whole power of the cause must be successively in each member of 
the series. For each one could only transmit what power it received 
from its immediate predecessor ; and if at any stage, any portion of 
the causative power were lost, all subsequent stages must be without 
it. But evidently no one generation of acorns ever had power or intel- 
ligence to create the subtle contrivances of vegetable life in their 
progeny ; and to suppose that all did, is but multiplying the absurdity. 
(4.) This question should be treated according to the atheist's point 
-of view, scientifically : science always accepts testimony in preference 
to hypothesis. Now there is a testimony, that of the Mosaic Scripture, as 
supported by universal tradition, which says that all series of organisms 
began in the creative act of an intelligent first Cause. The atheist may 
object, that men, as creatures themselves, have no right of their own 
knowledge, to utter such traditionary testimony ; for they could not 
be present before the organisms existed, to witness how they were 
brought into existence. The only pretext for such tradition would be 
that some prior superhuman Being, who did witness man's production, 
revealed to him how he was produced ; but whether any such prior 
Being existed, is the very thing in debate, and so may not be taken for 
granted. 

True ; but the existence of the testimony must be granted ; for it is 
a fact that it exists, and it must be accounted for. And the question is, 
whether the only good account is not, that the universe did have an intel- 
ligent Cause, and that this Cause taught primeval man whence he origi- 
nated. Otherwise, not only is the universe left unaccounted for, but 
the universal tradition. 

(5.) Science exalts experience above hypothesis even more than testi- 
mony. Now, the whole state of the world bears the appearance of 
recency. The recent discovery of new continents, the great progress 
of new arts since the historic era began, and the partial population of 
the earth by man, all belie the eternity of the human race. But 
stronger still, geology proves the creation, in time, of race after race 
of animals, and the comparatively recent origin of man, by her fossil 
records. These show the absolute beginning of genera. And the at- 
tempt to account for them by the development theory (Chambers or 
Darwin) is utterly repudiated by even the better irreligious philoso- 
phers ; for if there is anything that Natural History has established, it 



18 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

is that organic life is separated from inorganic forces, mechanical, chem- 
ical, electrical, or other, by inexorable bounds ; and that genera may 
begin or end, but never transmute themselves into other genera. 

6. Pantheism. — As I pointed out, there are but two hypotheses 
by which the demonstration of an eternal, intelligent, personal first 
Cause can be evaded. The one has just been discussed ; the other is the 
pantheistic. No separate first Cause of the universe need be assigned, 
it says, because the universe is God. The first Cause, and the whole 
creation are supposed to be one substance, world-god, possessing all the 
attributes of both. As extremes often meet, pantheism leads to the 
same practical results with atheism. 

Peripatetic Pantheism. — The ancient form of pantheism, probably 
peripatetic in its source, admitted that matter, dead, senseless, divisible, 
cannot be the proper seat of intelligence and choice, which are indi- 
visible; and that the universe is full of marks of intelligent design, so 
that an Anima Mundi, an intelligent Principle, must be admitted in 
the universe. Yes , I reply, it must, and that personal. Because it 
obviously has intelligence, choice, and will ; and how can personality 
be better defined 1 Nor can it inhabit the universe as a soul its body, 
not being limited to it in time or space, nor bearing that relation to it. 
Not in time : because, being eternal, it existed a whole past eternity 
before it ; for we have proved the latter temporal. Not in space ; for 
we have seen this Intelligence eternal ages not holding its ubi in space 
by means of body ; and there is not a single reason for supposing that 
it is now limited to the part of space which bodies occupy. It is not 
connected with matter by any tie of animality ; because immensely the 
larger part of matter is inanimate. 

Pantheism of Spinoza. — Modern pantheism appears either in the 
hypothesis of Spinoza the Jew, or in that of the later German ideal- 
ists. Both see that even the material universe teems with intelligent 
contrivances ; and more, that the nobler part, that known by conscious- 
ness, and so, most immediately known, is a world of thought and feel- 
ing in human breasts. Hence intelligence and will must be accounted 
for, as well as matter. Now, Spinoza's 1st position is: There can be 
no real substance, except it be self-existent, and so, eternal. That is : 
it is incredible that any true substance can pass from nihil into esse. 
2d. All the self-existent must be one ; this is unavoidable from the 
unity of its characteristic attribute. 3d. The one real substance must 
therefore be eternal, infinite, and necessarily existent. Hence, 4th. 
All other seeming beings are not real substance,' but modes of existence 
of this sole Being, the to pan. 5th. All possible attributes, however 
seemingly divine, must be modes, nearer or remote, of this Being; and 
it is necessary therefore to get rid of the prejudice, that modes of 
thought and will, and modes of extension, cannot be referred to the 
same substance. Hence this is the true account of the universe. All 
material bodies (so called) are but different modes of extension, in 
which the necessaryjsubstance projects himself; and all personal spirits 
(so called) are but modes of thought and will, in which the same to 
pan pulsates. 

Now you see that the whole structure rests on two unproved and pre- 
posterous asssumptions : that real substance cannot be except it be 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 19 

self-existent; and that the self-existent can be but one. The hu- 
man mind is incapable of demonstrating either. 

Pantheism of the Modern Idealist. — Says the modern idealist : 
Let the mind take nothing for granted, except the demonstrated ; 
and it will find that it really knows nothing save its consciousnesses. Of 
what is it conscious 1 Only of its own subjective states. Men fancy that 
these must be referred to a subject, called mind, spirit, self; as the 
substance of which they are states. So they fancy that they find ob- 
jective sources for their sensations, and objective limits to their voli- 
tions ; but if it fancies it knows either, it is only by a subjective 
consciousness. These, after all, are its only real possessions. Hence, 
it has no right to assert either substantive self, or objective 
matter ; it only knows, in fact, a series of self-consciousnesses. Hence ; 
our thinking and willing, constitute our being. Hence, too, the whole 
seeming objective world is only educed from a non-existence as it is 
thought by us. The total residuum then, is an impersonal power of 
thought, only existing as it exerts its self-consciousness in the various 
beings of the universe, (if there is a universe) and in God. Its sub- 
jective consciousnesses constitute spiritual substance (so called,) self, 
fellow-man, God ; and its objective, the seeming objective material 
bodies of the universe. 

Refutation. 1. Intuition must be accepted as valid. — Against 
both these forms of pantheism I present the following outline of a ref- 
utation. (1st.) If the mind may not trust the intuition which refers 
all attributes and affections to their substances, and which gives real 
objective sources for sensations, it may not believe in its intuitive self- 
consciousness, nor in that intuition of cause for every phenomenon, on 
which Spinoza founds the belief in his One Substance. Falsus in uno ; 
falsus in omnibus. There is an end of all thinking. That the in- 
tuitions above asserted, are necessary and primary, I prove by this: 
that every man, including the idealist, unavoidably makes them. 

Consciousness implies my Personality. — (2.) We are each one, 
co?isciousof our personality . You cannot renounce the world's "self," 
Mgo, self-consciousness; but that you have implied it. Hence, if we 
think according to our own subjective law, we cannot think another in- 
telligence and will, without imputing to it a personality. Least of all 
the supreme intelligence and will. To deny this is to claim to be more 
perfect than God. Rut worse yet ; if 1 am not a person, my nature 
is a lie, and thinking is at an end. If I am a person, and as the 
pantheist says, I am God, and God is I, then he is a person ; and the 
pantheistic system is still self-contradicted. 

Extension and Thought cannot be referred to a common Sub- 
stance. — (3.) Modes of extension, and modes of thought and will 
cannot be attributes of one substance. Matter is divisible ; neither 
consciousness, nor thought, nor feeling is; therefore the substance which 
thinks is indivisible. Matter is extended ; has form ; has relative bulk 
and weight. All these properties are impossible to be thought of any 
function of spirit, as relevant to them. Who can conceive of a thought 
triturated into many parts, as a stone into grains of sand ; of a resent- 
ment split into halves ; of a conception which is so many fractions of 
an inch longer or thicker than another ; of an emotion triangular or 
circular, of the top and bottom of a volition ? 



20 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

If Spinoza true, the to pan cannot vary. — (4.) If there is but one 
substance, to pan, the eternal, self-existent, necessary; then it must be 
homogeneous and indivisible. This is at least a just argumentum ad hom- 
inemiox Spinoza. Did he not infer the necessary unity of all real sub- 
stance, from the force of its one characteristic attribute, self and neces- 
sary existence ? Now, this immanent necessity, which is so imperative 
as to exclude plurality ; must it not also exclude diversity ; or at least 
contrariety ? How then can this one, unchangable substance exist at 
the same time in different and even contradictory states ; motion and 
xest; heat and cold ; attraction and repulsion? How can it, in its 
modes of thought and will, at the same time love in one man, and hate 
in another, the same object ? How believe and disbelieve the same 
thing? 

No Evil nor G-ood. — (5.) On this scheme there can be no responsi- 
bility, moral good or evil, guilt, reward, righteous penalty, or moral 
government of the world. All states of feeling, and all volitions are 
those of to pan. Satan's wrong volitions are but God willing, and his 
transgressions, God acting. By what pretext can the Divine Will be 
held up as a moral standard ? Anything which a creature wills, is 
God's will. 

Fatalistic. — (6.) And this because, next, pantheism is a scheme of 
stark necessity. Necessity of this kind is inconsistent with reponsibil- 
ity. But again ; it contradicts our consciousness of free-agency. "We 
know, by our consciousness, that in many things we act freely, we do 
what we do, because we choose ; we are conscious that our souls deter- 
mine themselves. But if Pantheism were true, every volition, as well 
■as every other event, would be ruled by an iron fate. So avowed sto- 
icism, the pantheism of the Old World ; so admits Spinoza. And con- 
sistently ; for the to pan, impersonal, developing himself according to 
an imminent eternal necessity, must inevitably pass through all those 
modifications of thought and extension, which this necessity dictates, 
and no others ; and the acts of God are as fated as ours. 

God would have all Sin and Woe. (7.) I retort upon the pantheist 
that picture which he so much delights to unfold in fanciful and glow- 
ing guise. Pantheism, says he, by deifying nature, clothes everything 
which is sweet or grand with the immediate glory of divinity, and 
ennobles us by placing us perpetually in literal contact with God. Do 
we look without on the beauties of the lanscape ? Its loveliness is but 
one beam of the multiform smile upon His face. The gloi'y of the 
sun is the flash of His eye. The heavings of the restless sea are but 
the throbs of the divine bosom, and the innumerable stars are but the 
sparkles of His eternal brightness. And when we look within us, we 
recognize in every emotion which ennobles or warms our breasts, the 
aspirations, the loves, the gratitudes which bless our being, the pulses 
of God's own heart beating through us. Nay, but, say I, are the mani- 
festations of the universal Being, all lovely and good ? If pantheism 
is true, must we not equally regard all that is abhorrent in nature, 
the rending thunder, and the rushing tornado, the desolating earth- 
quake and volcanos, the frantic sea lashing helpless navies into wreck, 
as the throes of disorder or ruin in God? And when we picture' the 
scenes of sin and woe, which darken humanity, the remorse of the vil- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 21 

Iain's privacy, the orgies of crime and cruelty hidden beneath the 
veil of night, the despairing death-beds, the horrors of battle fields,, 
the wails of nations growing pale before the pestilence, the din of 
burning and ravaged cities, and all the world of eternal despair itself.,, 
we see in the whole but the agony and crime of the divine Substance. 
Would it then be best called Devil or G-od ? Since suffering and sin 
are so prevalent in this world, we may call it Pan-diabolism, with more 
propriety than pantheism. Nor is it any relief to this abhorrent con- 
clusion to say, that pain and evil are necessitated, and are only seeming 
evils. Consciousness declares them real. 



LECTURE III. 



SYLLABUS. 

DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 

1. How much can reason infer of the attributes of God? His eternity? How ? 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, Que. 10. Dick, Lee. 17. Dr. S. Clarke, Discourse. 
&c, §1, 2, 5. Charnock on Attr. vol. i, 5th Discourse. 

2. His unity ? How ? 

Turrettin, Que. 3. Paley, Natural Theology. Dick, Lee. 18. Dr. 8* 
Clarke, Discourse, &c, §7. 

3. His spirituality and simplicity 1 How ? 

Turrettin, Que. 7. Dick, Lee. 17. Dr. S. Clarke, Discourse, § 8. Rev* 
Ro. Hall, Sermon i, vol. 3. Charnock, vol. i, Discourse 3. 

4. His infinitude, and especially his immensity 1 How ? 

Turrettin, Que.S and 9. Dick, Lee. 19. Dr. S. Clarke, § 6. Charnock,, 
vol, i, Discourse 7. 

5. His immutability ? 

Turrettin, Que. 11. Dick, Lee. 20. Dr. S. Clarke, §2. Charnock, voL 
i, Discourse 6. 

Traditionary Knowledge not to be separated from rational^ 
here. — It is exceedingly hard for us to return an exact answer to the 
question, How much reason can infer of the attributes of God 1 Shall 
we say : " So much as the wisest pagans, like Plato, discovered of 
them ?" It still remains doubtful how much unacknowledged aid he 
may not have received from Hebrew sources. Many think that Plato 
received much, through Pythagoras and his Egyptian and Mesopota- 
main researches. Or if we seek to find how far our own minds can go 
on this subject, without drawing upon the Scriptures, we are not sure 
of the answer; because when results have been given to us, it is much 
easier to discover the logical tie between them and their premises, than 
to detect unaided both proofs and results. Euclid having told us that 
the square of the hypothenuse equals the squares of the two remaining 



22 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

sides of every right angled triangle, it becomes much easier to hunt up 
a synthetic argument to prove it, than it would have been to detect 
this great relation by analysis. But when we approach Natural The- 
ology, we cannot forget the attributes which the Scriptures ascribe to 
God. 

1. God's Eternity. — Yet some things are as clear as God's being. 
The first and and most obvious of these attributes is, that He has no 
beginning, and no end. By God's eternity divines also intend a third 
thing : His existence without succession. These three propositions ex- 
press their definition of His eternity : existence not related to time. 
For the first : His being never had a beginning : for had there ever 
been a time when the First Cause was not, nothing could ever have ex- 
isted. So natural reason indicates that His being will never end, by 
this, that all pagans and philosophers make their gods immortal. The 
account of this conclusion seems to be, that it follows from God's in- 
dependence, self-existence, and necessary existence. These show that 
there can be no cause to make God's being end. The immortality of 
the First Cause then is certain, unless we ascribe to it the power and 
wish of self-annihilation. But neither of these is possible. What 
should ever prompt God's will to such a volition? His simplicity of 
substance (to be separately proved anon) does not permit the act ; for 
the only kind of destruction of which the universe has any experience, is 
by disintegration. The necessity of God's existence proves it can never 
end. The ground of His existence, intrinsic in Himself, is such that it 
cannot but be operative ; witness the fact that, had it been, at any mo- 
ment of the past infinite duration, inoperative, God and the universe 
would have been from that moment, forever impossible. 

Is it Unsuccessive 1 — But that God's existence is without succession, 
does not seem so clear to natural reason. It is urged by Turrettin that 
"God is immense. But if His existence were measured by parts of 
duration it would not be incommensurable." This is illogical. Do not 
the schoolmen themselves say, that essentia and esse are not the same ? 
To measure the continuance of God's esse by successive parts of time, 
is not to measure His essence thereby. A similar distinction shows the 
weakness of Turrettin's second argument : "That because simple and 
immutable, He cannot exist in succession, for the flux of being from 
past to present, and present to future would be change, and even change 
of composition." I reply, it is God's substance which is simple and 
immutable ; that its subsistence should be a continuance in sucession 
does not imply a change in substance. Nor is it correct metaphysics to 
say that a subsistence in succession is compounded, namely of the es- 
sence and the successive momenta of time through which it is trans- 
mitted. (See here, Kant.) 

Nor is Dr. Dick's argument even so plausible : That God's being in 
a past eternity must be unsuccessive, because an infinite past, composed 
of successive parts, is impossible ; and whatever God's mode of subsis- 
tence was, that it is, and will be. An infinite future made up of a 
succession of infinitely numerous finite parts is possible, as Dick admits; 
and so an infinite past thus constituted is equally as possible. Neither 
is comprehensible to our minds. If Turrettin or Charnock only meant 
that God's subsistence is not a succession marked off by changes in His 






OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 23 

essence or states, their reasonings would prove it. But if it is meant 
that the divine consciousness of its own existence has no relation to 
successive duration, I think it unproved, and incapable of proof to us. 
Is not the whole plausibility of the notion hence ; that divines, follow- 
ing that analysis of our idea of our own duration into the succession 
of our own consciousnesses, [which Locke made so popular in his war 
against innate ideas,] infer : Since all God's thoughts and acts are ever 
equally present with Him, He can have no succession in His conscious- 
nesses ; and so, no relation to successive time. But the analysis is false 
(see Lecture VI, p. 68,) and would not prove the conclusion as to God, 
if correct. Though the creature's consciousnesses constituted an un- 
successive unit act, as God's do, it would not prove that the conscious- 
ness of the former was unrelated to duration. But 2d. In all the acts 
and changes of creatures, the relation of succession is actual and true. 
Now, although God's knowledge of these as it is subjective to Himself, 
is unsuccessive, yet it is doubtless correct, i. e.,true tothe objective facts. 
But these have actual succession. So that the idea of successive dura- 
tion must be in God's thinking. Has He not all the ideas we have ; and 
infinitely more 1 But if God in thinking the objective, ever thinks 
successive duration, can we be sure that His own consciousness of His 
own subsistence is unrelated to succession in time ? The thing is too 
high for us. The attempt to debate it will only produce one of those 
" antinomies" which emerge, when we strive to comprehend the in- 
comprehensible. 

2. Unity of God. — Does reason show the First Cause to be one f 
or plural 1 If the first, whence the strong tendency to polytheism ? 
This may be explained by the craving of the mind for concrete ideas : 
by the variety and seeming contrariety of effects in the world ; by con- 
scious guilt, craving a daysman higher than man, yet less awful than 
the Supreme, and by the apotheosis of famous men. Reason does 
pronounce God one. But here again, I repudiate weak supports. Ar- 
gues Turrettin : If there are more than one, all equal, neither is God : 
if unequal, only the highest is God. This idea of exclusive supremacy 
is doubtless, essential to religious trust : Has it, thus far, been shown 
essential to the conception of a First Cause 1 Were there two or more 
independent eternal beings, neither of them would be an infallible 
object of trust. But has it been proved, as yet, that we are entitled to 
expect such a one? Again, Dr. S. Clarke urges: The First Cause 
exists necessarily : but a.) This necessity must operate forever, and 
everywhere alike, and, b.) This absolute sameness must make oneness. 
Does not this savour of Spinosism 1 Search and see. As to the 
former proposition : all that we can infer from necessary existence is, 
that it cannot but be just what it is. What it is, whether singular, dual, 
plural ; that is just the question. As to the 2d proposition, sameness 
of operation does not necessarily imply oneness of effect. Have two 
successive nails from the same machine, necessarily numerical identity ? 
Others argue again : We must ascribe to God every conceivable per- 
fection, because, if not, another more perfect might be conceived; and 
then he would be the God. I reply : Yes, if he existed. It is no rea- 
soning to make the capacity of our imaginations the test of the sub- 
stantive existence of objective things. Again, it is argued, more 
justly, that, if we can show that the eternal, self-existent Cause must 



24 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

be absolute and infinite in essence, then His exclusive unity follows . 
for that which is infinite is all-embracing as to that essence. Covering, 
so to speak, all that kind of being, it leaves no room for anything of its 
kind coordinate with itself. Just as after defining a universe, we can- 
not place any creature outside of it : so, if G-od is infinite, there can b& 
but one. Whether He is infinite we will inquire. 

Argued from inter-dependence of all His Effects. — The 
valid and practical argument, however, for God's unity, is the conver- 
gence/ of design and inter-dependency of all His works. All dualists, 
indeed, from Zoroaster to Manes, find their pretext in the numerous 
cross-effects in nature, seeming to show cross-purposes — e. g. One set 
of causes educe a fruitful crop : when it is just about to gladden the 
reaper, it is beaten into the mire by hail, through another set of at- 
mospheric causes. Everywhere poisons are set against food, evil against 
good, death against life. Are there not two antagonist wills in Nature 1 
Now it is a poor reply, especially to the mind aroused by the vast and 
solemn question of the origin of evil, or to the heart wrung by irre- 
sistible calamity, to say with Paley, that we see similarity of contri- 
vance in all nature. Two hostile kings may wage internecine war, by 
precisely the same means and appliances. The true answer is, that, 
question nature as we may, through all her kingdoms, animal, inor- 
ganic, celestial, from the minutest disclosures of the microscope, up to 
the grandest revelations of the telescope, second causes are all inter- 
dependent ; and the designs convergent so far as comprehended. So that 
each effect depends, more or less directly, on all the others. Thus, in 
the first instance : The genial showers and suns gave, and the hail 
destroyed, the grain. But look deeper: They are all parts of one and 
the same meteorologic system. The same cause exhaled the vapour 
which made the genial rain and the ruthless hail. Nay, more ; the 
pneumatic currents which precipitated the hail, were constituent parts- 
of a system which, at the same moment, were doing somewhere a work 
of blessing. Nature is one machine, moved by one mind. Should you 
see a great mill, at one place delivering its meal to the suffering poor,, 
and at another crushing a sportive child between its iron wheels, it 
would be hasty to say, " Surely, these must be deeds of opposite 
agents." For, on searching, you find that there is but one water- 
wheel, and not a single smaller part which does not inosculate, nearly 
or remotely, with that. This instance suggests also, that dualism is 
an inapplicable hypothesis. Is Ormusd stronger than Ahriman? Then 
he will be victor. Are both equal in power? Then the one would 
not allow the other to work with his machinery ; and the true result, 
instead of being a mixture of cross-effects, would be a sort of "dead 
lock " of the wheels of nature. 

3. God a Spirit. — We only know substance by its properties ; but 
our reason intuitively compels us to refer the sensible properties to a sub- 
jectum, a substratum of true being, or substantia. We thus know, first, 
spiritual substance, as that which is conscious, thinks, feels, and wills ; 
and then material substance, as that which is unconscious, thoughtless, 
lifeless, inert. To all the latter we are compelled to give some of the 
attributes of extension ; to the former it is impossible to ascribe any 
of them. Now, therefore, if this first Cause is to be referred to any 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 25 

class of substance known to us, it must be to one of these two. Should 
it be conceived that there is a third class, unknown to us, to which the 
first Cause may possibly belong, it would follow, supposing we had 
been compelled to refer the first Cause to the class of spirits, (as we 
shall see anon, that we must,) that to this third class must also belong 
all creature spirits, as species to a genus. For we know the attributes, 
those of thought and will, common between God and them ; it would 
be the differentia, which would be unknown. Is the first Cause, then, 
to be referred to the class, spirits? Yes; because we find it possessed, 
in the highest possible degree, of every one of the attributes by which 
we recognize spirit. It thinks ; as we know by two signs. It produced 
us, who think ; and there cannot be more in the effect than was in the 
cause. It has filled the universe with contrivances, the results of 
thought. It chooses; for this selection of contrivances implies choice. 
And again, whence do creatures derive the power of choice, if not 
from it? It is the first Cause of life; but this is obviously an attri- 
bute of spirit, because we find full life nowhere, except we see signs of 
spirit along with it. The first Cause is the source of force, and of 
motion. But matter shows us, in no form, any power to originate 
motion. Inertia is its normal condition. We shall find God's power 
and presence penetrating and inhabiting all material bodies ; but mat- 
ter has a displacing power, as to all other matter. That which is im- 
penetrable obviously is not ubiquitous. 

But may not God be like us, matter and spirit in one person 1 I 
answer, No. Because this would be to be organized ; but organization 
can neither be eternal, nor immutable. Again, if He is material, why 
is it that He is never cognizable to any sense 1 We know that He is all 
about us always, yet never visible, audible, nor palpable. And last, 
He would no longer be penetrable to all other matter, nor ubiquitous. 

Simplicity of God's Substance — Divines are accustomed to assert pf 
the divine substance an absolute simplicity. If by this it is meant that 
He is uncompounded, that His substance is ineffably homogeneous, that 
it does not exist by assemblage of atoms, and is not discerptible, it is 
true. For all this is clear from His true spirituality and eternity. We 
must conceive of spiritual substance as existing thus ; because all the 
acts, states, and consciousnesses of spirits, demand a simple, uncom- 
pounded substance. The same view is probably drawn from His eter- 
nity and independence. For the only sort of construction or creation, 
of which we see anything in our experience, is that made by some 
aggregation of parts, or composition of substance ; and the only kind 
of death we know is by disintegration. Hence, that which has neither 
beginning nor end is uncompounded. 

But that God is more simple than finite spirits in this, that in Him 
substance and attribute are one and the same, as they are not in them, 
I know nothing. The argument is, that as God is immutably what He is, 
without succession, His essence does not like ours pass from mode to 
mode of being, and from act to act, but is always all modes, and exert- 
ing all acts ; hence His modes and His acts are Himself. God's thought 
is God. He is not active, but activity. I reply, that if this means more 
than is true of a man's soul, viz : that its thought is no entity, save 
the soul thinking ; that its thought, as abstracted from the soul that 
thinks it, is only an abstraction and not a thing ; it is undoubtedly 



26 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

false. For then we should have reached the pantheistic notion, that 
God has no other being than the infinite series of His own consciousnesses 
and acts. Nor would we be far off from the other result of this fell 
theory ; that all that is, is God. For he who has identified God's acts 
thus with His being, will next identify the effects thereof, the existence 
of the creatures therewith. 

4. God immense. — Infinitude means the absolutely limitless char- 
acter of God's essence. Immensity means the absolutely limitless being 
of His substance. His being, as eternal, is in no sense circumscribed 
by time; as immense, in no wise circumscribed by space. But let us 
not conceive of this as a repletion of infinite space by diffusion of par- 
ticles : like e. g. an elastic gas released in vacuo. The scholastic for- 
mula was, ' The whole substance, in its whole essence, is simultaneously 
present in every point of infinite space, yet without multiplication of 
itself. This is unintelligible ; (but so is His immensity ;) it may assist 
to exclude the idea of material extension. God's omnipresence is His 
similar presence in all the space of the universe. 

Now, to me, it is no proof of His immensity to say, the necessity of 
His nature must operate everywhere, because absolute from all limita- 
tion. The inference does not hold. Nor to say that our minds impel 
us to ascribe all perfection to God ; whereas exclusion from any space 
would be a limitation ; for this is not conclusive of existences without 
us. Nor to say, that God must be everywhere, because His action and 
knowledge are evei*y where, and these are but His essence acting and 
knowing. Were the latter true, it would only prove God's omnipres- 
ence. But so far as reason apprehends His immensity, it seems to my 
mind to be a deduction from His omnipresence. The latter we deduce 
from His simultaneous action and knowledge, everywhere and perpet- 
ually, throughout His universe. Now, let us not say that God is noth- 
ing else than His acts. Let us not rely on the dogma of the medieval 
physicks : ' That substance cannot act save where it is present.' But 
God, being the first Cause, is the source of all force. He is also pure 
spirit. Now we may admit that the sun (by its attraction of gravita- 
tion) may act upon parts of the solar system removed from it by many 
millions of miles ; and that, without resorting to the hypothesis of an 
elastic ether by which to propogate its impulse. It may be asked : if 
the sun's action throughout the solar system fails to prove His presence 
throughout it, how does God's universal action prove His omnipres- 
ence 1 The answer is in the facts above stated. There is no force 
originally inherent in matter. The power which is deposited in them 
must come from the first Cause, and must work uuder His perpetual 
superintendence. His, not theirs, is the recollection, intelligence, 
and purpose which guide. Now, as we are cjbscious that our intel- 
ligence only acts where it is present, and where it perceives, this view 
of Providence necessarrily impels us to impute omnipresence to this 
universal cause. For the powers of the cause must be where the effect is. 
But now, having traced His being up to the extent of the universe, 
which is to us practically immense, why limit it there 1 Can the mind 
avoid the inference that it extends farther 1 If we stood on the boun- 
dary of the universe, and some angel should tell us that this was "the 
edge of the divine substance," would it not strike us as contradictory 1 
Such a Spirit, already seen to be omnipresent, has no bounding outline. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 27 

Again, we see God doing and regulating so many things, over so vast an 
area, and with such absolute sovereignty, that we must believe His 
resources and power are absolute within the universe. But it is prac- 
tically boundless to us. To succeed always inside of it, God must com- 
mand such a multitude of relations, that we are practically impelled to 
the conclusion, that there are no relations, and nothing to be related 
outside His universe. But if His power is exclusive of all other, in all 
infinite space, we can scarcely avoid the conclusion that His substance is 
in all space. 

God Infinite. — By passing from one to another of God's attributes, 
and discovering their boundless character, we shall at last establish the 
infinitude of His essence or nature. It is an induction from the sev- 
eral parts. 

5. By God's immutability, we mean that He is incapable of change. 
As to His attributes, His nature, His purposes, He remains the same from 
■eternity to eternity. Creation, and other acts of God in time, imply 
no change in Him ; for the purpose to do those acts at that given time 
was always in Him, just as when He effected them. This attribute 
follows from His necessary existence ; which is such that He cannot be 
any other than just what He is. It follows from His self-existence and 
independence ; there being none to change Him. It follows from His 
simplicity : for how can change take place, when there is no composi- 
tion to be changed? It follows from His perfection ; for being infinite, 
He cannot change for the better; and will not change for the worse. 
Scarcely any attribute is more clearly manifested to the reason than 
Clod's immutability. 



LECTURE IY. 



SYLLABUS. 

DIVINE ATTBIBITTES. (Continued.) 

1. Can reason infer God's omnipotence ? How? 

Turretin Loc. iii, Que. 211. Dr. S. Clarke's Discourse, Prop. X. Dick, 

Lect. 211, 22. Charnock, Discourse X. 
■2. His omniscience? How? 

Turrettin, Que. 12. Dr. Clarke, Prop, viii and xi. Dick, Lect. 21, 

22. Charnock, Discourse S, § 2. 

3. His righteousness ? How ? 

Turrettin, Que. 19. Dr. Clarke, Prop. xii. Dick, Lect. 25. Chalmers 
Nat. Theology, Bk. iii, ch. 2. 

4. His goodness ? How? 

Turrettin, Que. 20. Dr. Clarke, Ubi supra. Charnock, Discourse xii, 
§ 4. Chalmer's Natural Theol., Bk. iv, ch. 2. Leibnitz, Theodicee 
Ahrigee. 

5. Does reason show that man bears moral relations to God ? What are they, 
and what the natural duties deduced ? 

Butler's Analogy, Pt. I, Ch. 2-5. Howe's Living Temple, Pt. I, Ch. 6. 
Dr. Clarke's Discourse, 2nd vol., Prop. I to IV. 

1. God all Powerful. — When we enquire after God's power, we mean 



28 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

here, not His potestas, or exousia or authority, but His potentia or 
dunamis. When we say : He can do all things, we do not mean 
that He can suffer, or be changed, or be hurt ; for the passive capacity 
of these things is not power, but weakness or defect. "We ascribe to Gfod 
no passive power. When we say Gfod's power is omnipotence, we mean 
that its object is only the possible, not the absolutely impossible. Here, 
however, we must again define, that by the absolutely impossible, we do- 
not mean the physically impossible. For we see Gfod do many things 
above nature, (phusis ;) that is, above what material, or human, or 
angelic nature can effect. But we mean the doing of that which im- 
plies an inevitable contradiction. Some, e. g. Lutherans of older school, 
say it is a derogation from Gfod's omnipotence, to limit it by the inevi- 
table self-contradiction : [that He is able to confer actual ubiquity on 
Christ's material body.] But we object: Popularly Gfod's omnipotence 
may be denned as His ability to do all things. Now of two incompati- 
bles, both cannot become entities together ; for, by the terms of the case, 
the entity of the one destroys that of the other. Bat if they are not, 
and cannot be both things, the power of doing all things does not em- 
brace the doing of incompatibles. But 2d, more conclusively ; if even 
omnipotence could effect both of two contradictories, then the self-con- 
tradictory would become the true ; which is impossible for man to 
believe. Hence, 3d, the assertion would infringe the foundation prin- 
ciple of all truth ; that a thing cannot be thus, and not thus, in the 
same sense, and at the same time. 

But between these limits we believe Gfod is omnipotent : That is, 
His power is absolute as to all being. In proof, note : He obviously has 
great power ; He has enough to produce all the effects in the universe. 
Cause implies power : He is the universal first Cause. 2d. His power 
is at least equal to the aggragate of all the forces in the universe, of 
every kind ; because all sprang from Him at first. A mechanic con- 
structs a machine far stronger than himself; it is because he borrows 
the forces of nature. There was no source whence Gfod could borrow :' 
He must needs produce all those forces of nature Himself; and He sus- 
tains them. 3d. God is one, and all the rest is produced by Him; so, 
since all the forces that exist, except His own, depend on Him, they 
cannot limit His force. Hence, it is absolutely unlimited, save by its 
own nature. And now, the exhibition of it already made in creation 
is so vast and varied, embracing (probably) the very existence of matter, 
and certainly its whole organization, the very existence of finite spirits, 
and all their attributes, and the government of the whole, that this 
power is practically to us immense. 4th. We have found Gfod immu- 
table. Whatever He once did, He can do again. He is as able to go 
on making universes such as this indefinitely, as to make this. 5th. 
He does not exist by seccession ; and hence He is able to make two or 
more at once, as well as successively. It is hard to conceive how power 
can be more infinite than this. 

Gtod's Power Immediate. — Once more, Gfod's power must be con- 
ceived of as primarily immediate ; i.e. His simple volition is its 
effectuation ; and no means interpose between the will and the effect. 
Our wills operate on the whole external world through our members j 
and they, often, through implements, still more external. But Gfod has 
no members ; so that we must conceive of His will as producing its 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 29 

effects on the objects thereof, as immediately as our wills do on our 
bodily members. Moreover, the first exertion of God's power must 
have been immediate ; for at first nothing existed to be means. God's 
immutability assures us that the power of so acting is not lost to Him. 
The attribution of such immediate power to God does not deny that He 
also acts through "second causes." 

2. Wisdom Distinguished for Knowledge.' None who believe in 
God have ever denied to Him knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom is the 
employment of things known, with judicious reference to proper ends. 
Now ; God is Spirit ; but to think, to know, to choose, are the very 
powers of spirits. The universe is full of beautiful contrivances. 
These exhibit knowledge, wisdom, and choice, coextensive with the ag- 
gregate of the whole. 

God's Knowledge of two Kinds. — But I had best pause and ex- 
plain the usual distinctions made in God's knowledge. His scientia 
visionis, or libera, is His knowledge of whatever has existence before 
His view ; that is, of all that is, has been, or is decreed to be. His 
scientia intelligentiae, or simplex (uncompounded with any volition) is 
His infinite conception of all the possible, which He does not purpose 
to effectuate. Others add a scientia media, which they suppose to be 
His knowledge of the future free and responsible acts of free agents. 
They call it mediate, because they suppose God foreknows these acts 
•only inferentially, by means of His knowledge of their characters and 
circumstances. But Calvinists regard all this as God's scientia visionis. 
Let us see whether, in all these directions, God's knowledge is not 
without limit. 

Proved from God's Will. — First, I begin from the simple fact 
4hat He is spiritual and omnipotent First Cause. All being save His 
own is the offspring of His will. Grant a God, and the doctrine of a 
providence is almost self-evident to the reason. This refers not only 
phenomena of specific creation, but all phenomena, to God's will. If 
any thing or event has actuality, it is because He has willed it. But 
now, can volition be conceived, in a rational spirit, except as condi- 
tioned on cognition a priori to itself? Hence, 1st, a knowledge is 
implied in God, a priori to and coextensive with His whole purpose. 
But because this purpose (that of universal, almighty First Cause) 
includes the whole that has been, is, and shall be ; and since volition 
does not obscure, but fix the cognition which is the object thereof, God 
has a scientia visionis, embracing all the actual. 2nd. Will implies 
selection : there must be more in the a priori cognition than is in the 
volition. Hence God's scientia simplex, or knowledge of the possible, 
is wider than his scientia visionis. This view will be found to have 
settled the question between us and Arminians, whether God purposes 
the acts of free agents because He has foreseen their certain futurition, 
or whether their futurition is certain because He has purposed them. 
Look and see. 

Knowledge and wisdom seen in His works. — But more popularly; 
all God's works reveal marks of His knowledge, thought and wisdom. 
But these works are so vast, so varied, so full of contrivance, they dis- 
close to us a knowledge practically boundless. His infinite power 
implies omniscience, for '^knowledge is power." Certain success 



30 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

implies full knowledge of means and effects. We saw God is omni- 
present ; but He is spirit. Hence He knows all that is present to> 
Him ; for it is the nature of spirit to know. A parallel argument 
arises from God's providence ; (which reason unavoidably infers.) 
The ends which are subserved show as much knowledge and wisdom as 
the structure of the beings used — so that we see evidence of complete 
knowledge of all second causes, including reasonable agents and their 
acts. For so intimate is the connexion of cause with cause, that per- 
fect knowledge of the whole alone, can certify results from any. Here 
also we learn, God's knowledge of past and future is as perfect as of 
present things; for the completion of far-reaching plans, surely 
evolved from their remote causes, implies the retention by God of all 
the past, and the clear anticipation of all the future. Nay, what 
ground of certain futurition is there, save that God purposes it ? 
His omnipotence here shows that He has a complete foreknowledge ; 
because that which is to be is no other that what He purposes. God's 
immutability proves also His perfect knowledge of past, present, and 
future. Did He discover new things, these might become bases for 
new purposes, or occasions of new volitions, and God would no longer 
be the same in will. God's omniscience is implied also in all His moral 
attributes ; for if He does not perform His acts understandingly, He is 
not praiseworthy in them. Last, our consciences reveal an intuition of 
God's infinite knowledge ; for our fears recognize Him as seeing our 
most secret, as well as our public acts. His unfading knowledge of the 
past is especially pointed out by conscience ; for whenever she remem- 
bers, she takes it for granted that God does. Thus we find God's 
scientia visionis is a perfect knowledge, past, present, and future, of all 
beings and all their actions, including those of moral agents. 

Scientia Simplex inferred. — How do we infer His knowledge 
of the possible 1 Thus : A reasonable being must first conceive, in or- 
der to produce. He cannot make, save as he first has his own idea to- 
make by. Then, before God set about making the universe, He had in 
His mind the conception in all its details, of what He was to make* 
How long before 1 As God changes not, it must have been from eter- 
nity. There then was a knowledge of the possible. But was that 
which is now actual, the only possible before God's thought? Sover- 
eignty implies selection ; and this, two or more things to choose among. 
And unless God had before Him the ideas of all possible universes, 
He may not have chosen the one which, had He known more, would 
have pleased Him best; His power was limited. In conclusion, the 
infallibility of all God's knowledge is implied in His power. Ordinarily, 
He chooses to work only through regular sejcond causes. But causes 
and effects are so linked, that any uncertainty in one, jeopadizes all 
the subsequent. But we see that God is possessed of some way of 
effectuating all His will. Therefore He infallibly knows all causes ; 
but each effect is in turn a cause. 

God's Knowledge all primitive. — We must also believe that God 
knows all things intuitively, and not deductively. A deduction is a 
discovery. To discover something implies previous imperfection of 
knowledge. God's knowledge, moreover, is not successive, as ours is, 
but simultaneous. Inference implies succession ; for conclusion comes 
after premise. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 31 

3. Rectitude. — God's righteousness, as discoverable by reason, 
means, generally, His rectitude, and not His distributive justice. Is 
He a moral being? Is His will regulated by right? Reason answers, 
yes; by justice, by faithfulness, by goodness, by holiness. 

Rectitude of God proved by Bishop Butler. — First, because this 
character is manifest in the order of nature which He has established. 
This argument cannot be better stated than in the method of Bishop 
Butler. 1. God is Governor over man; as appears from the fact that, 
in a multitude of cases, He rewards our conduct with pleasures and 
pains. For the order of Nature, whether maintained by God's present 
providence, or impressed on it at first only, is God's doing ; its rewards 
are His rewarding. 2. The character of proper rewards, and especially 
of punishments, appears clearly in these traits. They follow acts, 
though pleasant in the doing. They sometimes tarry long, and at last 
fall violently. After men have gone certain lengths, repentance and 
reform are vain, &c. 3. The rewards and penalties of society go to 
confirm ; because they are of God's ordaining. Second: This God's rule 
is moral ; because the conduct which earns well-being is virtuous ; and 
ill-being, sinful. True, remedial processes, such as repentance, reform, 
have their peculiar pains : but these are chargeable rather to the sin, 
than the remedy. True again, the wicked sometimes prosper; but 
. natural reason cannot but regard this as an exception, which future 
awards will right. Further: Society, (which is God's ordinance,) 
usually rewards virtue and punishes vice. Love of approbation is in- 
stinctive; but God thus teaches men most generally to approve the 
right. And last: How clear the course of Nature makes God's appro- 
val of the right appear, is seen in this ; that all virtuous societies tend to 
self-perpetuation in the long run, and all vicious ones to self-extinction. 
Third: Life is full of instances of probation, as seed-time for harvest, 
youth for old age, which indicates that man is placed under a moral 
probation, here. 

God's Rectitude argued from Conscience. — But a most powerful 
argument for God's rectitude is that presented by the existence of con- 
science in man. Its teachings are universal. Do some deny its intui- 
tive authority, asserting it to be only a result of habit or policy ? It 
is found to be a universal result ; and this proves that God has laid in 
us some intentional foundation for the result. Now, whatever, the dif- 
ferences of moral opinion, the peculiar trait of conscience is, that it 
always enjoins that which seems to the person right. It may be disre- 
garded; but the man must think, if he thinks at all, that in doing so, he 
has done wrong. The act it condemns may give pleasure ; but the 
wickedness of the act, if felt at all, can only give pain. Conscience is 
the imperative faculty. Now if God had not conceived the moral dis- 
tinctions, he could not have imprinted it on us. But is his will governed 
by it ? Does he not from eternity know extension as an object of 
thought, an attribute of matter, and sin, as a quality of the rebel 
creature? Yet He Himself is neither extended, nor evil. The reply is: 
since God has from eternity had the idea of moral distinction, whence was 
it derived, save from His own perfection ? In what being illustrated, if 
not in Himself? But more, conscience is God's imperative in the human 
soul. This is its peculiarity among rational judgments. But since God 
implanted conscience, its imperative is the direct expression of His will, 



32 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

that man shall act righteously. But when we say, that every known 
expression of a being's will is for the right, this is virtually to say that 
he wills always righteously. The King's character is disclosed in 
the character of his edicts. 

God's truth and faithfulness are evinced by the same arguments ; 
and by these, in addition. The structure of our senses and intelligence, 
and the adaptation of external nature thereto, are His handiwork. 
Now, when our senses and understanding are legitimately used, their 
informations are always found, so far as we have opportunity to test 
them, correspondent to reality. One sense affirms the correctness of an- 
other. Senses confirm reasonings, and vice versa. Last, unless we can 
postulate truth in God, there is no truth anywhere. For our laws of 
perception and thought being His imprint, if His truth cannot be relied 
on, their truth cannot, and universal skepticism is the result. 

4. God's Benevolence. — " The world is full of the goodness 
of the Lord." I only aim to classify the evidences that God is 
benevolent. And 1st, generally: since God is the original Cause of 
all things, all the happiness amidst His works is of His doing, and 
therefore proves His benevolence. But more definitely; the natures of 
all orders of sentient beings, if not violated, are constructed, in the main, 
to secure their appropriate well-being. Instance the insect, the fish, the 
bird, the ox, the man. 3d. Many things occur in the special providence 
of God which show Him benevolent; such as providing remedial medi- 
cines, &c, for pain, and special interpositions in danger. 4th. God 
might, compatibly with justice, have satisfied Himself with so adapting 
external nature to man's senses and mind, as to make it minister to his 
being and intelligence, and thus secure the true end of his existence, 
without, in so doing, making them pleasant to his senses. Our food and 
drink might have nourished us, our senses of sight and hearing might 
have informed us, without making food sweet, light beautiful, and 
sounds melodious to us. And yet appetite might have impelled us to 
use our senses and take our food. Such, in a word, is God's goodness, 
that He turns aside to strew incidental enjoyment. The more unessen- 
tial these are to His main end, the stronger the argument. 5th. Gfod 
has made all the beneficent emotions, love, sympathy, benevolence, for- 
giveness, delightful in their exercise, and all the malevolent ones, as 
resentment, envy, revenge, painful to their subjects, thus teaching us, 
-that He would have us propagate happiness and diminish pain. Last : 
Conscience, which is God's imperative, enjoins benevolence on us as one 
duty, whenever compatible with others. Benevolence is therefore 
God's will; and doubtless, He who wills us to be so, is benevolent 
Himself. 

No Pagan theist ever has doubted God's Providence. You may 
refer me to the noted case of the Epicurean ; they were practical 
atheists. Their notion that it was derogatory to the blessedness and 
majesty of the gods to be wearied with terrestial affairs, betrays in 
one word a false conception of the divi,ne perfections. Fatigue, con- 
fusion, worry, are the results of weakness and limitation. To infinite 
knowledge and power the fullest activities are infinitely easy and so 
pleasurable. Common sense argues from the perfection of God that 
He does uphold and direct all things by His Providence. His wisdom 
and power enable Him to it. His goodness and justice certainly impel 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 33 

Him to it; for it would be neither benevolent nor just, having brought 
sentient beings into existence, to neglect their welfare, rights and guilt. 
God's wisdom will certainly prosecute those suitable ends for which He 
made the universe, by superintending it. To have made it without an 
object ; or, having one, to overlook that object wholly after the world 
was already made, would neither of them argue a wise being. The 
manifest dependence of the creature confirms the argument. 

Existence of evil. How explained 1 — But there stands out the 
great fact of the existence of much suffering in the universe of God ; 
and reason asks: "If God is almighty, all-wise, sovereign, why, if 
benevolent, did He admit any suffering in His world 1 Has He not 
chosen it because He is pleased with it per se ? It is no answer to say : 
(rod makes the suffering the means of good, and so chooses it, not 
for its own sake, but for its results. If He is omnipotent and all-wise, 
He could have produced the same quantum of good by other means, 
leaving out the suffering. Is it replied : No, that the virtues of sym- 
pathy, forgiveness, patience, submission, could have had no existence 
unless suffering existed. I reply that then their absence would have 
been no blemish or lack in the creature's character. It is only because 
there is suffering, that sympathy therewith is valuable. Suppose it 
be said again: : 'A11 physical evil is the just penalty of moral evil," 
and so necessitated by God's justice ? The great dificulty is only 
pushed one step farther back. For, while it is true, sin being ad- 
mitted, punishment ought to follow, the question returns : Why did 
the Almighty permit sin, unless He be defective in holiness, as in 
benevolence 1 It is no theodice'e to say that God cannot always exclude 
sin, without infringing free-agency ; for I prove, despite all Pelagians, 
from Celestius down to Bledsoe, that God can do it, by His pledge to 
render elect angels and men indefectible for ever. Does God then 
choose sin ] This is the mighty question, where a theodicSe has been 
so often attempted in vain. The most plausible theory is that of the 
optimist ; that God saw that this actual universe, though involving evil, 
is on the whole the most beneficient universe which was possible in 
the nature of things. For they argue, in support of that proposition : 
God being infinitely good and wise, cannot will to bring out of posse 
into esse, a universe which is, on the whole, less beneficent than any 
possible universe. The obvious objection to this bettistic scheme is, that 
it limits the powers of God. Being infinite, He could have made a 
universe, which should have had the same quantum of happiness with 
this, without the same evils. 

Optimist Theory modified. — But there is a more legitimate and 
defensible hypothesis. It is not competent to us to say that beneficence 
of result is, or ought to be God's chief ultimate end in creation and 
Providence. It is one of His worthy ends ; this is all we should assert. 
But may we not assume that doubtless there is a set of ends, (no man 
may presume to say what all the parts of that collective end are,) 
which God eternally sees to be the properest ends of His creation and 
providence 1 I think we safely may. Doubtless those ends are just 
such as they ought to be, with reference to all God's perfections ; and 
the proper inference from those perfections is, that He is producing 
just such a universe, in its structure and management, as will, on the 
whole, most perfectly subserve that set of ends. In this sense, and no 



34 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

other, I am an optimist. But now, let us make this all-important re- 
mark : When the question is raised, whether a G-od of infinite powers 
can be benevolent in permitting natural, and holy in permitting moral 
evil, in His universe, the burden of ■proving the negative rests on the 
doubter. We who hold the affirmative are entitled to the presumption,, 
because the contrivances of creation and providence are beneficent so- 
far as we comprehend them. Even the physical and moral evils in the. 
universe are obviously so overruled, as to bring good out of evil. 
(Here is the proper value in the argument, of the instances urged by 
the optimist: that suffering makes occasion for fortitude and sympathy, 
&c, &c; and that even man's apostacy made way for the glories of 
Redemption.) The conclusion from all these beautiful instances is r 
that so far as finite minds can follow them, even the evils tend towards 
the good. Hence, the presumptive probability is in favour of a solu- 
tion of the mystery, consistent with the infinite perfections of God- 
To sustain that presumption against the impugner, we have only to 
make the hypothesis, that for reasons we cannot see, God saw it was 
not possible to separate the existing evils from that system which, as a 
whole, satisfied His own properest ends. Now let the skeptick disprove- 
that hypothesis ! To do so, he must have omniscience. Do you say,. 
I cannofc demonstrate it ? Very true ; for neither am I omniscient. 
But I have proved that the reasonable presumption is in favour of the 
hypothesis that it may be true, although we cannot explain how it 
comes to be true. 

5. Man's duties to God. — If the existence and moral perfections 
of God be admitted, no one will dispute that man bears moral rela- 
tions to Him. This appears very simply, from the fact that man is a 
moral being, related to God as his Maker and providential Ruler. It 
is also inferrible from the marks of a probation^ and a moral rule ap- 
pearing in the course of nature. And it is emphatically pronounced 
by the native supremacy of conscience, commanding us to obey.. Ra- 
tional Deists, as well as Natural Theologians, have attempted to de- 
duce the duties man owes his Creator. They are usually (on grounds 
sufficiently obvious) summed up as: 1. Love, with reverence and 
gratitude; 2. Obedience; 3. Penitence; 4. Worship. The rule of 
obedience is, of course, in natural religion, the law of nature in the 
conscience. 



LECTURE V. 



SYLLABUS. 

IMMORTALITY OF SOULS, AND FUTURE REWARDS. 

1. Is the soul immortal ? And are the future consequences of virtue and vice 
in this life, everlasting ? 

Butler's Analogy. Pt. I, Ch. 1, 2, 5. Turrettin, Loc. i, Que. 14. Dr. S. 
Clarke's Discourse. Vol. ii. Prop. iv. Dr. Thomas Brown, Lect. 96, 97. 
Breckinridge's Theol. Vol. i, pp. 58-70. Chalmers' Nat. Theol. Bk. iii, 
Ch. 3. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 35 

2. Does Reason hold out any sure prospect of pardon for sins ? 

Butler's Analogy, Pt. II, Ch. 5. University Lectures— Dr. Van Zandt, p. 
43-51. Dr. S. Clarke, as above, Prop. vi. 

3. Can Natural Theolgy be sufficient for man's religious welfare ? How much 
evidence here, for the inspiration of the Bible ? 

Turrettin, Loc. i, Que. 4. University Lecture by Van Zandt. Chalmers ' 
Nat. Theol. Bk. v, Ch. 1. Dr. S. Clarke, as above. Prop, v to viii, inclu- 
sive. Leland's Necessity of Revelation at large. 

1. Are the soul and its moral prelations immortal ? 
Tks Soul him iterial. — Dr. Thomas Brown says that the ques- 
tion of the soul's immortality is involved in that of its immateriality. 
But there are two kinds of materialists: those who believe thinking, 
feeling, and willing to be simple effects of organization ; and those 
who believe the soul to be a separate substance, and, although matter 
of some purer sort, yet monadic and atomic. The latter might, with 
some consistency, believe in its immortality. We reject both. 

The great evidence of the soul's spirituality will be found, when in- 
spected, intuitive. Man only knows by his own ideas. The very con- 
sciousness of these implies a being, a substance which is conscious. So 
that man's knowledge of himself, as conscious, thinking substance, is 
a priori to, though implicitly present in, all his other thinkings — i. e., 
he knows his own thinking self first, and by knowing it, knows all other 
things. But this thinking self is impressed from without with certain 
affections, called sensation, which the man is as inevitably impelled to 
refer to objective substance, to the non Ego. Now, in comparing this 
conviction of the Ego, and the non Ego, a certain contrast arises of 
their attributes : the one is that which thinks, feels, and wills, which 
is single and monadic; that is, the ideas of separation into parts, or 
of existence in parts, of shape, extension, solidity, impenetrability, re- 
sistance, momentum, &c, are so absolutely irrelevant to it as attributes, 
that it is impossible seriously to refer them to the Ego, oven in thought. 
But the non Ego, made known by sensation, does exist in parts, is 
divisible, extended, impenetrable, inert, bounded by figure, endued 
■with weight and momentum. But all attributes of thought and feeling 
and volition are here incompatible. The law of our reason compels us 
to refer this absolute contrast of attributes to a true difference of 
substance; so that while we name the Ego spirit, the objective we call 
matter. And especially must the substances be different ; for this 
cause, that every particle of matter, however small, may be divided; 
whereas the soul and all its functions are indivisible. The thought of 
their top and bottom, of halving or quartering them, is preposterous. 
The substance which thinks is, therefore, a spiritual monad. 

Objections refuted. — Materialists have objected that material af- 
fections have this oneness to our conception ; as a musical tone, the 
numerous series of successive vibrations of a chord divisible into parts. 
I reply, that the oneness is only in the perception of it. Only as it 
becomes our mental affection, does it assume unity. As we trace the 
effect from the vibration of the chord to that'of the air, the tympanum, 
the long series, tbe aqueons humour, the fimbrated nerve, the series is 
still one of successive parts. It is only when we pass from the mate- 
rial organ to the mind, that the phenomenon is no longer a series of 
pulses, but a unified sensation. This very case proves most strongly, 
the unifying power which belongs to the mind alone. So, when an 



36 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

extended object produces a sensation, though the object perceived is 
divisible, the perception thereof, as a mental act, is indivisible. 

The Soul immortal. — Now, the soul being another substance than 
the body, it is seen at once, that the body's dissolution does not neces- 
sarily imply that of the soul. Indeed, let us look beyond first im- 
pressions, and we shall see that the presumption is the other way. 
The fact that we have already passed from one to another stage of ex- 
istence, from foetus to infant, to child, to man, implies that another 
stage may await us ; unless there be some such evidence of the soul's 
dependence on the body for existence (as well as for contact with the 
external world,) as will destroy that presumption. But there is no 
such dependence ; as appears from our experience in amputations, flux 
of bodily particles, emaciation under disease, &c. In none of these 
cases is the loss of the spirit proportioned to the bodily loss. This 
independence is proved by the fact, that in sensation even, the bodily 
organ is merely the soul's instrument. The eye, e. g., is but its optic 
glass: that in sleep the soul may be active while the body is wholly 
passive ; and chiefly, that all the higher processes of soul, memory, 
conception, imagination, reasoning, are wholly independent of the body. 
Even if the grossest representationist scheme of perception and thought, 
(that, for instance, of Hartly, or of Hobbes,) were adopted, making 
the phantasmata or species derived through the senses, the object of 
perception, still the question returns, How does the soul get its concep- 
tion of general notions: of time, of space, of God, of self? Herein, 
surely, it is independent of the body. 

Does mental disease imply the Soul's mortality; — Here again, 
materialists have objected, that the cases of mental imbecility in in- 
fancy and dotage, and of mania or lunacy, seem to show a strict depen- 
dence of soul on body, if not an identity. In dotage, is not the mind, 
like the body, tottering to its extinction 1 If our theory of monadic 
spirit were true, would mental disease be possible 1 I reply, that strictly 
speaking, spirit is not essentially diseased. It is the bodily organ of 
its action, which is deranged, or weakened. Bear in mind, that though 
there are undoubted processes of thought independent of the body, 
sensations form the larger part of our subjects of thought and volition. 
Now, remember that the soul is subject to the law of habit ; and we 
shall easily see that where, through the disease of the bodily organs, 
the larger number of the objects of its action are distorted, the balance 
of its working may be disturbed, and yet the soul's substance undis- 
eased. That this is the correct explanation, is confirmed by what 
happens in dreams : the mind's action is wholly abnormal ; it is be- 
cause the absence of sensations has changed the balance of its working. 
Let the body awake, and the ordinary current of sensations flow aright, 
and the mind is at once itself. Again, in lunacy and dotage, ideas 
gained by the mind before the bodily disease or decline took place, 
are usually recalled and used by the mind correctly ; while more re- 
cent ones are either distorted, or wholly evanescent. Finally, while it 
is inconsistent to ascribe an organic disease to that which is not or- 
ganized, a functional derangement does not seem wholly out of the 
question. 

Only death known is dissolution. The Soul simple. — It ap- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. $r 

pears then, that the thinking monad is independent of the body for 
its existence. Impressive as are the changes of bodily dissolution, 
they contain no philosophic ground for denying the conclusion drawn 
from the experience of the soul's existence through so many moments, 
and so many changes. But the phenomenon of death itself suggests a 
powerful analogy to show that the soul will not die. What is death? 
It is but separation of parts. When we examine all the seemingly 
destructive processes of nature, combustion, decomposition, we find no 
atom of matter annihilated ; they only change their collocations. There 
is no proof that God ever destroys an atom. The soul is a spiritual 
atom; why suppose it is destroyed? The only death is dissolution ; 
the soul cannot dissolve. And this is my conception of its immortality j 
not a self or necesary existence, but the absence of all intrinsic ground 
of decay, and of all purpose in its Maker to extinguish its being. 

Would not Brutes be thus shown immortal ? — But, objects the 
materialist : The same reasonings wouli prove the immortality of 
brutes. I reply, this is an objection ad ignorantiam. Where the 
necessary absurdity, should it be true? But remember, all the moral 
arguments, (the most conclusive,) are lacking to this conclusion. I 
confess, it is hard for me to conclude that the substance which, in my 
horse, has memory, association of ideas, fear, joy, volition, is not spirit- 
But this spirit is not a moral .essence. What God chooses to do with 
it when the body dies, I know not. Ignorance here is no argument, 
against the results of positive knowledge elsewhere. 

Equal Kewards require a future existence. — The well known 
argument for a future existence from God's righteousness compared 
with the imperfect distribution of awards here, need not be elaborated. 
All your books state it. It is conclusive. An objection has, indeed,, 
been urged : That if the awards are so unequal, no evidence remains- 
of God's perfect rectitude ; and so the former premise is lost. I reply: 
The course of temporal providence is neither the only nor chief proof 
of God's rectitude. Conscience demonstrates that attribute, without 
the light of observation. Further, while the awards are not exact, 
they approximate exactness here, showing that it is God's nature to 
be, finally, strictly just. And last, the inequalities of awards are ex- 
plained consistently with God's rectitude by this: that they give scope 
for man's fortitude and sympathy, and for God's long suffering. 

Conscience. — Conscience, apprehending God's justice, gives us a 
different, and an instinctive proof of a future existence. Remorse for 
sins does by no means verge towards its termination, as death ap- 
proaches; but recruits its fury. If the soul could apprehend this lifer 
as its only existence, at the conscious approach of death, remorse would 
relax its grasp; and at the expiring breath, would release the criminal, 
as having paid the debt of justice. We find in the dying conscience 
an inevitable and universal recognition of its immortality. 

Does Hope prove it? — The ancient, and some modern moralists, 
attached much importance to man's longing for existence, horror of 
extinction, and hopes in the future. I cannot but feel, with Dr. 
Brown, that these lack weight. Is not this horror of extinction re- 
solvable into that love of life which we share with the animals ? Hope 
does, indeed, ever fly before us, to the end. But is it not as much a 



38 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 



of sensual or worldly good, as of spiritual? But should we infer 
from these premises, that a brute's or a man's animal existence will be 
perpetual, we should err. 

Man's spiritual capacities formed 'for immortality. — I find a 
more solid argument in man's capacity to know and serve God, and in 
his capacity of indefinite mental and moral improvement. God's mo- 
tive for creating must have been from Himself; because, when He 
began, nothing else existed whence to draw it. He must, therefore, 
have sought, in creation, to satisfy and glorify His own perfections. 
Natural Theology tells us of no rational creatures, save men. Should 
there ever be a time when there are no rational creatures in the uni- 
verse, there would be no recipients of God's spiritual goodness, and 
none to comprehend His glory. To have no eyes to behold the light, 
is virtually to quench it. Can we then believe that the only creature 
capable of knowing and enjoying Him shall perish so soon — perish, as 
to the majority of our race, before they understand Him at all 1 But 
again, man, unlike all other sentient creatures, is capable of indefinite 
improvement. The ox, the elephant, the horse, soon reaches the nar- 
row limits of its intelligence ; and these, the same fixed by the common 
instincts of its race, for its progenitors. The first bee built its cells 
as artistically as those of this "enlightened century." But man can 
make almost indefinite advancements. And when he has taken all the 
strides between a Newton or a Washington, and a naked Australian, 
there is no reason, save the narrow bounds of his mortal life, to limit 
his farther progress. Farther, it is precisely in his mental and moral 
powers, that the room for growth exists. His muscular strength soon 
reaches that standard beyond which there is no usual increase. His 
senses are educated up to a certain penetration ; there the vast and the 
minute arrest them. But memory, reason, conscience, affections, habits, 
may be cultivated to indefinite grades of superiority. Let us now 
view man's terrestrial pursuits, his vanity, his disappointments, his 
follies, and the futilities in which the existence of most men is con- 
sumed. How utterly trivial ! How unworthy of the grand endow- 
ment ! If this life were all, well might we exclaim, with the Hebrew 
poet, "Wherefore hast Thou made all men in vain 1" We see that 
God is unspeakably wise in all His comprehended works ; we must con- 
clude that He has not expended so much for naught; that these seeds 
of immortality will inherit their suitable growth. I see a man setting 
scions in his nursery a few inches apart ; but I learn that they are 
trees which will require forty feet for their ultimate growth. If the 
man knows what he is about, I conclude that he intends to transplant 
them. 

Reason divines no bodily Resurrection. — For these various rea- 
sons, then, we may look across the gulf of death with the confident 
expectation of a future spiritual existence. I say spiritual ; for the resur- 
rection of the body is a doctrine of pure revelation, for which natural 
reason presents us only the faintest analogies, if any. It is the glory 
of the Bible, that it alone reveals the immortality of man, of the 
whole united person, which lives, hopes, fears, sins, and dies here. But 
in proving the immortality of the soul, a sufficient basis is laid for 
the larger part of the moral forces which bring our responsibility to 






OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 39 

bear aright. The essential point is to evince the proper identity of the 
t)eing who acts here, and is rewarded hereafter. It is mental, and not 
personal identity, which lays this essential basis for responsibility. It 
is the spirit which understands, feels, and chooses, which recognizes 
identity in its consciousness. Hence, it is the spirit which is re- 
sponsible. 

Future existence must be endless, and under responsibility. 
Now, if existence is continued beyond the grave, there is nothing to 
check the conclusion that it will be continued forever. Suppose a soul 
just emerged from the impressive revolution of bodily death? then it 
must repeat all the reasonings we have considered, and with redoubled 
force, that after so many changes are survived, a posteriori, all others will 
be. But if man's conscious existence is continuous and endless, few 
will care or dare to deny that his moral relations to God are so, like- 
wise. For they proceed directly from the more original relation of crea- 
ture to Creator. The startling evidences that this life is somehow a pro- 
bation for that endless existence, the youth of that immortal manhood, 
have been stated by Bishop Butler with unrivalled justness. No more 
is needed by the student than to study him. 

2. Does Reason see hope of pardon ? No. Conscience convinces 
every man that he is a sinner, and that God is just. Does natural rea- 
son infer any adequate proofs that God will, on any terms, be merci- 
ful ; or is His righteousness as imperative as that conscience, which is 
His vicegerent within us? This is the question of most vital interest 
to us in natural religion. We are pointed to the abounding evidences 
of God's benevolence, and told that mercy is but benevolence towards 
the guilty. But, alas ! Nature is almost equally full of evidences of 
His severity. Again, we are pointed to that hopeful feature in the 
order of His providence, which is but another expression for the regu- 
lar ordering of His will, where we see remedial processes offered to 
man, for evading the natural consequences of his errors and faults. 
Does man surfeit himself? Nature offers a healing medicine, and 
arrests the death which his intemperance has provoked. Does the 
prodigal incur the penalty of want ? Repentance and industry may 
repair his broken fortunes. So, alleviations seem to be provided on 
every hand, to interpose mercifully between man's sins and their natu- 
ral penalties. May we not accept these as showing that there is some 
way in which God's mercy will arrest our final retribution? This ex- 
pectation may have that slight force which will prepare us to embrace 
with confidence the satisfaction of Christ, when it is revealed to us in 
the gospel. But I assert that, without revelation, all these slight 
hints of a possible way of mercy are too much counterbalanced by the 
appearances of severity, to ground any hope or comfort in the guilty 
breast. What is the testimony of conscience ? Does she accept any 
of the throes of repentance, or the natural evils inflicted on faults, as 
a sufficient atonement ? On the contrary, after the longest series of 
temporal calamities, the approach of death only sharpens her lash. 
The last act of culminating remorse, as the trembling criminal is dis- 
missed from his sufferings here, is to remit him to a just and more fear- 
ful doom beyond the grave. And what say conscience and experience 
of the atoning virtue of our repentance and reformations ? They only 



40 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

repair the consequences of our faults in part. The sense of guilt re- 
mains : yea, it is the very nature of repentance to renew its confession 
of demerit with every sigh and tear of contrition. And the genuine- 
ness of the sorrow for sin has no efficacy whatever to recall the conse- 
quences of the wrong act, and make them as though they had never 
been. But, above all, every palliation of natural penalty, every reme- 
dial process offered to our reach by nature, or ministered by the self- 
sacrifice of friends is but temporary. For, after all, death comes to< 
every man, to the most penitent, the most genuinely reformed, the- 
restored sinner most fenced in by the mediatorial love of his fellows, 
as certainly as to the most reckless profligate ; and death is the terri- 
ble sum of all natural penalties. This one, universal fact, undoes 
every thing which more hopeful analogies had begun, and compels us. 
to admit that the utmost reason can infer of God's mercy is, that it 
admits a suspension of doom. 

3. Is Natural Theology sufficient? — The last question which 
we shall now discuss in Natural Theology, is concerning its sufficiency 
to lead a soul to eternal blessedness. Now, I have strenuously con- 
tended that there is some science of Natural Theology. We have 
seen that it teaches us clearly our own spirituality and future exis- 
tence, the existence and several of the attributes of God, His righte- 
ousness and goodness and our responsibility to Him,. His providential 
control over all His works, and our endless relation to the sanctions of 
His moral attributes. But man needs more than this for his soul's 
well-being; and we assert that Natural Theology is fatally defective 
in the essential points. We might evince this practically by pointing 
to the customary state of all gentile nations, to the darkness of their 
understandings and absurdities of their beliefs, the monstrous perver- 
sions of their religious worship, and the blackness of their general 
morals, their evil consciences during their lives, and their death-beds 
either apathetic or despairing. If it be said that I have chosen unfa- 
vourable examples, then I might argue the point practically again, by 
pointing to the brightest specimens of pagan philosophy. We soe that 
with all the germs of truth mixed with their creeds,, there were many 
errors, that their virtues lacked symmetry and completeness,, and their 
own confessions of uncertainty and darkness were usually emphatic in 
proportion to their wisdom. 

Cannot atone, nor regenerate. — But to specify. One fatal de- 
fect of Natural Theology has been already illustrated. Man knows 
himself a sinner in the hands of righteous Omnipotence, and has no 
assurance whatever of any plan of mercy. An equally fatal defect 
might be evinced, (far more clearly than divines have usually done,) 
in its lack of regenerating agency. If we knew nothing of the sad 
story of Adam's probation and fall, just reasoning would yet teach us, 
that man is a morally depraved being. The great fact stands out, that 
his will is invincibly arrayed against the mandates of his own conscience, 
on at least some points. Every man's will exhibits this tendency 
in some respects, with a certainty as infallible as any law of nature. 
Now such a tendency of will cannot be revolutionized by any syatem 
of moral suasion ; for the conclusive reason that the efficacy of all ob- 
jective things to act as inducements^ depends on the state of the wilL, 




OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY.. 41 

and therefore cannot revolutionize it. The effect cannot renew its own 
cause. But Natural Theology offers no moral force higher than moral 
suasion. Can then the creature who remains an everlasting sinner,, 
possess everlasting well-being ? 

Lacks authority. — Another striking defect of Natural Theology is 
its lack of authority over the conscience. One would think that where 
the inferences of natural reason appeared conclusive, bringing the 
knowledge of a God to the understauding, this God would be recog- 
nized as speaking in all her distinct assertions; and the conscience 
and heart would bow to Him as implicitly as when He is revealed in 
His word. But practically it is not so. Men are but too ready to 
hold revealed truth in unrighteousness; and Natural Theology has 
ever shown a still greater lack of authority, even over hearts which 
avowed her truth. Perhaps the reason of this is, that every mind has 
indistinctly and half consciously recognized this profound metaphysical 
defect, which underlies nearly all her reasonings. How do we first 
know spirit ? By our own consciousness, presenting to us the thinking 
Ego. How do we know thought, volition, power ? As we are first 
conscious of it in ourselves. What is our first cognition of the right 
and the wrong ? It is in the mandates of our own consciences. And the 
way we conceive of the infinite Spirit, with His thought, will, power, 
rectitude, is by projecting upon Him our self-derived conception of 
this essence and these attributes, freed from the limitations which be- 
long to ourselves. Seeing, then, that God and His character are to so 
great an extent but ourselves objectified, elevated above our conscious 
defects, and made absolute from our conscious limits, how can we ever 
know that the correspondence of the objective reality, with this con- 
ception of it, is accurate ? It is as though our self-consciousness were 
the mirror, in which alone we can see the spectrum of the great Invisi- 
ble reflected. How shall we ever tell to what degree it may be mag- 
nified, distorted, coloured, by the imperfection of the reflecting sur- 
face, seeing Natural Theology can never enable us to turn, around and 
inspect the great original, eye to eye ? That something is there, a 
something vast, grand and real, our laws of thought forbid us to doubt; 
and that it has a general outline like the reflected image, we may not 
doubt; for else, what was it that cast the mighty spectum upon the disc 
of our reason ? But reason can never clear up the vagueness and uncer- 
tainty of outline and detail, nor verify His true features. Now, when 
Revealed Theology comes, it enables us to make this verification ; and 
especially when we see " God manifest in the flesh," " the brightness 
of the Father's glory, and express image of His person." 

Why then study Natural Theology? — It may be asked, if Natural 
Theology cannot save, why study it? I answer: 1st. It teaches some 
truths; and no truth is valueless. 2d. When Revelation comes, Nat- 
ural Theology gives satisfaction to the mind, by showing us two inde- 
pendent lines of proof for sundry great propositions? 3d. It excites 
the craving of the soul for a Revelation. 4tb. When that comes, it 
assists us to verify it, because it meets the very wants which Natural 
Theology has discovered. 

A Revelation may be expected. Finally, if Revelation is abso- 
lutely necessary for salvation, there is the s tr ongest probability that 



42 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

God has given one. This appears from God's goodness and wisdom. 
It is proved, second, by the admissions of the Deistical argument, 
which always assumes the burden of proof in the proposition: "Reve- 
lation is not necessary." It appears, third, from the general expecta- 
tion and desire of a communication from the skies among Pagans. 
Last: when we see (as will be demonstrated at another place) that the 
enjoyment of infallible commmunications from the infinite Mind is the 
natural condition of life to all reasonable spirits, the argument will 
become conclusive, that God surely has given a message to man. Now, 
no other book save the Bible presents even a plausible claim to be that 
Revelation. 



LECTURE VI. 



SYLLABUS. 
THE SOURCES OF OUR THINKING. 

1. Has man any innate ideas ? 

Locke's Essay. Book i, Ch. 2. Dugald Stuart on the Mind, Ch. 1, 3. 4. 
Morell, Hist. Mod. Phil., p. 76-95. Cousin Du Vrai Legons Ire et 2nie. 

2. Must all thinking proceed from intuitive beliefs? "Why? If unproved, why 
are they received as valid ? What the answer to Hume's skepticism ? 

Same authorities. Morell, p. 252-254. Jouffroy, Introduct. to Ethicks., 
vol. i, Lect. 8-10. Cousin Du Yiai. Lagon's 3me et 4me. 

3. What are the tests of intuitive beliefs ? Show that our belief in our own 
consciousness, and spiritual existence, in our identity, in the reality of the ex- 
ternal world, and established axioms belong to this class. 

Cousin, as above. Mill's Logic, Bk, ii : Ch. 5. Southern Review of April, 
1869. Positivism in England. 

4. Prove especially that our belief in causation and power is intuitive. 
Same authorities. Mill, Bk. ii, Ch. 5 and 21. Dr. Thomas Brown, Lect. 
6 and 7. Morell, pp. 186, 187, 254, 382, &c. Chalmer's Nat. Theol., Bk. 
i, Ch.4. 

Show the connexion of this doctrine with Natural Theology and all science. 

Is IT NECESSARY TO STUDY THE MIND'S POWERS, BEFORE ALL ELSE? 

— Many think, with Locke, that the inquiry into the powers of the 
human mind should precede all other science, because one should know 
his instrument before he uses it. But what instrument of knowing is 
man to employ in the examination of his own mind ? Only his own 
mind. Hence, it follows, that the mind's native laws of thinking must 
be, to some extent at least, taken upon trust, at the outset, no matter 
where we begin. This is the less to be regretted, because the correct 
■use of the mind's powers depends on nature, and not on our success in 
analyzing them. Men syllogized before Aristolle, and generalized be- 
fore Bacon. I have therefore not felt obliged to begin with these in- 
quiries into the sources of our thinking ; but have given you a short 
sketch of Natural Theology to familiarize your miuds to your work. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 43 

Why then, before Theology? — You may ask : Since every science 
must employ the mental powers, and yet the teacher of Chemistry, 
Mathematics, Mechanics, does not find it necessary to preface his in- 
structions with inquiries into the laws and facts of psychology, why 
should the divine do it? One answer is, that thoroughness in theolo- 
gy is so much more important. Another is, experience shows that 
theological speculation is much more intimately concerned with a cor- 
rect psychology than physical. The great English mathematicians, of 
the school of Newton, have usually held just views of philosophy : the 
French of the school of La Place have usually been sensualistic Ideo- 
logues of the lowest school. In mathematics and astronomy, they have 
agreed well enough; in theology, they have been as wide apart as 
Christianity and atheism. This is because theology and ethicks are 
little concerned with physical observations: much with abstract ideas 
and judgments. For these reasons it is necessary for the divine to at- 
tain correct views of the great facts of mental science ; while yet we do 
not stake the validity of theological truths on the validity of any mere 
psychological arguments. 

My purpose is to give by no means a complete synopsis, even, of 
mental science ; but to settle for you correct opinions concerning those 
fundamental facts and laws of spirit, upon which theological questions 
most turn. 

1. Question of Innate Ideas. — Of these I take up first the ques- 
tion, Has the the mind any innate ideas ? The right answer is, No ; 
but it has innate powers, which a priori dictate certain laws of thought 
and sensibility, whenever we gain ideas by sensitive experience. Locke, 
famous for exploding the doctrine of innate ideas, goes too far ; teach- 
ing that we derive all our ideas (he defines an idea, whatever we have 
in our minds as the object of thought) from sensation. This he holds 
is a passive process ; and all that the processes of reflection (the active 
ones) can do, is to recall, group, compare, combine, or abstract these 
materials. Before sensation, the mind is a tabula rasa, without im- 
press in itself, passively awaiting whatever may be projected on it from 
without. To show that no ideas are innate, he takes up two classes, 
hitherto considered most clearly such, abstract ideas of space, time, 
identity, and infinity, &c, and axioms; assuming that if these can be 
explained as derived ideas, and not innate, there are none such. He 
teaches, then, that we only get the idea of space, by seeing two bodies 
separated thereby ; of time, by deriving it from the succession of men- 
tal impressious ; of identity, as remembered consciousnesses. Axioms, 
he holds to be clearly truths of derivation, because untutored minds 
do not believe them, as they would were they intuitive, until they see 
them from concrete, experimental cases, by sensation. 

Fatal consequences of a senualistic psychology. — Consider how 
far this kind of vicious analysis may lead, as in the hands of Condillac, 
to sensationalism, and last, to materialism and atheism. If no first 
truth is of higher source than an inference of experience, then none 
can be safely postulated beyond experience. Hence, the argument for 
a God, the belief of all the supernatural, is invalid. Witness Hume's 
evasion, that the world is a "singular effect." How can sensation show 
us a God? Another equally logical, although a most heterogeneous 



44 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

consequence, is the Pyrrhonism of Bishop Berkeley. And another 
must be the adoption of some artificial scheme of ethicks, resolving 
the highest law of conscience into a deduction of self-interest, or some 
such wretched scheme. For if there is nothing in the mind, save 
what comes by sense, {Nihil in intellectu quodnon prius in sensu,) whence 
the notions of right and obligation. 

True Statement. — The great error of the analysis of Locke was 
in mistaking the occasional cause, sensation, for the efficient cause of 
abstract ideas, which is the reason itself. For example : we first de- 
velope the idea of space, when we see bodies in space ; but the idea of 
space is implied a priori, in the very perception of that which is ex- 
tended, not learned derivatively from it. True, our most natural 
conception of time is of that measured in our successive consciousnesses. 
But the word, "succession" once spoken, time is already conceived. 
That is to say, the reason, on perceiving a thing extended, intuitively 
places it in space; and event, in time; the sense furnishing the occa- 
sion, the reason furnishing the abstract notion, or form, for the concrete 
perception. So in the other cases. To the attempt to derive axioms, 
we answer that the sensitive experience of some instance is the occa- 
sion, but the intuition of the reason the efficient of these primitive 
and necessary judgments. For since our experiences of their truth 
are few and partial, how can experience tell us that they are univer- 
sally true? To the objection, that they do not universally and neces- 
sarily command the assent of untutored minds, I fearlessly rejoin that 
this is only true in cases where the language of their enunciatien is 
not understood. But of this, more anon. 

Whence new abstract notions? — To show the student how shal- 
low is the analysis which traces the whole of our thinking to sense, I 
ask: When the "reflective" processes of comparison, e. g., have given 
us perception of a relation between two sensible objects, (as of a ratio- 
between two dimensions,) is not this relation a new idea? Whence 
is it? 

The mind active, and endued with attributes. — In a word, you 
may find the simplest, and also the highest and most general refutation 
of this sensualistic philosophy in this fact. The mind is an intelligent 
agent. Has it any attributes ? Any cognizable, permanent essentia ? 
Surely. Now, then, must not those essential qualities imply powers ? 
And will any one say that they are only passive powers, and yet the 
mind is an agent ? Surely not. Then the mind, although not fur- 
nished with innate ideas, must have some innate powers of determin- 
ing its own acts of intelligence. 

It is related that when Locke's Essay on the the Human Understand- 
ing was first reported to his great cotemporary, Leibnitz, some one 
remarked that Locke's system of psychology was built en a literal accep- 
tation of the old scholastic maxim, Nihil in intellectu, quod non prius 
in sensu. Leibnitz answered : Ita ; Nisi Inttllectus Ipse I These words 
contain the key to the whole discussion. 

2. All our beliefs cannot be proved. — There is a plausible temp- 
tation to deny this, and to treat all our notions and beliefs as derived. 
It arises from the feeling that it is more philosophical to take nothing 
upon trust ; to require proof of everything. But does not a derived 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 45 

truth imply something to derive from ? If therefore primitive judg- 
ments are treated as derived, the problem is only removed one step 
"backward to this question : "Whence the truths of which these are the 
deductions? Primary or derived 1 ? To prove every postulate is there- 
fore impossible ; because the first proof implies some premise from 
which to prove. Unless then, some things are seen to be true intu- 
itively, there can be no reasoning. And these unproved truths are the 
foundations of all that we prove. 

Metaphysics. Skepticism. Its grounds. — The question then arises, 
If these primary beliefs are unproved, how can we know that any of 
our thinking thence is true? I have now introduced you to the very 
centre of the skeptical objections of the school of Montaigne and 
Hume, against the certainty of all human knowledge. Let us also 
view the other, less radical grounds. They argue, then : 1st. That 
knowledge must be uncertnin as long as it is incomplete ; because the 
discovery of the unknown related parts may change our view of those 
supposed to be known. And that men in all ages have believed dif- 
ferently with equal confidence. 2d. That perception only shows us 
qualities, and not substances, so that we have only the mind's infer- 
ence, unproved and undemonstrable, for the existence and essence of 
the latter, 3d. That our organs of sense, the instruments of all per- 
ceptions, are perpetually changing their atomic structure ; that they 
often deceive us ; that the significance which we give to sensations de- 
pends on habits, knowledge and education ; and that as to memory, we 
must take the correctness of her reproductions wholly upon trust. 
4th. That our general and abstract ideas, such as those of causation, 
space, identity, substance, &c, have not even the uncertain evidence 
of sensation ; but are given by the mind's own a priori forms of thought ; 
so that we have no proof for them, save that nature teaches us to think 
so. And last : The sweeping objection is, that man only knows his 
own subjective states ; to the outside of that charmed circle he can 
never pass, to compare those states with objective reality. But as 
there is no ground for our assuming the validity of this objective per- 
ception, except that it is nature to make it, we have only to suppose a 
different structure given to our minds, to make all seem false, which 
now seems true. 

Refutation of Skepticism. — Such are the sweeping objections. 
To the first three of the special ones, there is one general, and per- 
fectly valid answer. It is not proved that all the teachings of sensa- 
tion, memory, reason, are untrustworthy, because they are sometimes 
misinterpreted, or because men differ about them sometimes. For the 
mind knows that it is furnished with criteria for verifying seeming per- 
ceptions, recollections, inferences, which criteria give certain results, 
when applicable, and when faithfully applied. If there are no such, 
how did the skeptic find out the falsehood of so many of the seeming dicta 
of these faculties f As to the first and radical plea, that primitive 
judgments must be, from their very nature, unproved; and that man 
can never know anything besides his own subjective states, I freely 
grant that a direct logical refutation is out of the question, from the 
very terms of it. But a valid indirect one lies in these facts : 1st. 
That the skeptic, just as much, and as necessarily, holdsthese primary 



46 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

beliefs as we do. Being implied in the validity of all other beliefs, 
they. must be accepted as true, or all thinking must cease; we are no 
longer intelligent beings. But the skeptic will think : his argument 
against us is thinking, (erroneous.) 2d. We cannot conceive how an 
intelligent being couid be formed at all, against whose primary beliefs 
the same objections would not lie, most against God's! 3d. The fact 
that primitive beliefs are unproved is the very glory of their cer- 
tainty, and not their weakness. They admit no proof, only because 
they are so immediate. The perversity of the skeptic is just that of 
the man who, when in perfect contact with a tree, or post, should de- 
clare it impossible to ascertain whether it was near or distant, because 
forsooth he was so near that no measuring rule could be introduced, to 
measure the distance! 4th. Chiefly we apply the argumentum ad 
hominem of Pascal. If no knowledge can be certain, then the skep- 
tic must not affirm his unbelief; for this, if admitted, would be a true 
proposition. The very mental processes exhibited in these objections 
imply many of the primary beliefs, against the validity of which the 
skeptic objects. If nothing can be proved, what right has he to go 
about proving, that nothing can be proved? Finally: Truth is intrin- 
sic, and not a mere consequence of our mental structure. 

3. Which are primitive judgments? — The test of an intutive, or 
primary truth established by the best writers are three. (1.) They 
are primary: (what Hamilton calls, ambiguously, incomprehensible, not 
capable of being comprehended under some more general and primary 
judgment, and of being explained thereby.) They are primary, be- 
cause they are not derived or inferred from any other truth, prior in 
order of proof to them; but are seen to be true without any depen- 
dence on a premise. (2.) They are necessary — i. e., the mind not only 
sees that they are true, but must be true ; sees that the negation of 
them would lead to a direct contradiction. (3.) They are universal — 
i. e., the mind is obliged to believe them as much true in every rele- 
vant case, as in the first; and all people that are sane, when the terms 
of their enunciation are comprehended with entire fairness, and dis- 
passionately considered, are absolutely certain, the world over, to ac- 
cept them as true. Now, our adversaries, the sensationalists, would 
freely admit that if the mind has any judgments which would S and 
these three tests, they are indeed immediate intuitions. The most 
practical way, therefore, to discuss their validity will be to do it in 
application to special classes of supposed intutions. 

Axioms are such. — Are the propositions called axiomatic truths, 
immediate intuitions ; or are they derived truths ? Sensationalists say, 
the latter; because they are not primary truths; but deductions of our 
experience; for they say, as we have seen Locke write, no one has them 
till he learns them by experimental, sensational trial, and observation ; 
and the announcement of them, instead of receiving from the untu- 
tored mind that immediate assent we claim, would, in many cases, ex- 
cite only a vacant stare. We have already shown that the concrete 
case is only the occasion, not the source, of the axiomatic judgment. 
And as to the latter objection, the mind hitherto uninformed fails to 
assent to them, only because he does not understand the terms, or 
comprehend the relations connected with the proposition. Grant that 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 4T 

the presenting of a concrete, experimental case is at first necessary to 
enable this mind to comprehend terms and relations; still we claim 
(the decisive fact) that once they are comprehended, the acceptance of 
the proposition is inevitable. How preposterous is this objection, that 
because the mind did not see, while the medium was obstructed, there- 
fore the object is not visible. One might, with equal justice, say that 
my child had no faculty of immediate eye-sight, because he would not 
be willing to affirm which of "two pigs in a poke" was biggest! I 
argue again under this head, that several axioms are incapable of being 
experimentally inferred ; because they never can be brought under the 
purview of the senses; e.g. "Divergent straight lines will never 
meet if produced to infinity." No one will ever inspect with his sight 
or touch an infinite line ! But, says Mill, one forms a mental diagram 
of an infinite pair of lines; and by inspection of them, learns the 
truth. I reply, what guides and compels the mind in the formation 
of the infinite part of this mental diagram, so as to ensure its corre- 
spondence with the sensible part ] Not sense, surely ; for that is the 
part of the mental diagram, which no eye can ever see. It is just this 
a priori power of judgment, which Mill denies. My argument stands. 
Once more I argue on this head, that axioms cannot be experimentally 
derived ; because they are universal truths ; but each man's experience 
is partial. The first time a child ever divides an apple, he at once 
apprehends that the whole is larger than either of its parts. At this 
one illustration of it, he as much believes it of all the divided apples 
of the universe, as though he had spent an age in dividing millions of 
apples for experiment. How can a universal truth come from a single 
case ? If experience were the source of the belief, the greatest mul- 
titude of cases one could try, would never be enough to demonstrate 
a universal proposition ; for the proportion of similar cases possible in the 
universe, and still untried, would be infinitely preponderent still. 
Experience of the past can, of itself, never determine the future. 

The sensationalist is inconsistent. He says axioms are learned from 
experience by sense ; and there are no primary judgments of the pure 
reason. Aye ! But how does the mind learn that sensational experi- 
ence is true 1 that perceptions have any validity ? Only by a primary 
judgment ! Here then is the axiomatic truth, that what sense gives us 
experimentally is true. This, surely, is not derived ! Indeed, the at- 
tempt to construct a system of cognitions with a denial of primary 
ideas and judgments, will be found in every case, as preposterous as 
the attempt to hang a chain upon nothing. 

For axioms are necessary truths. — When we ask whether axio- 
matic truths will meet the second test, that of necessity, sensationalists 
say: "What is a necessary truth? Does one answer, with Whewell, 
that it is one, the negation of which is inconceivable; then this is no 
test of primary truths, no test of truths at all; because our capacity 
of concieving things to be possible or otherwise, depends on our men- 
tal habits, associations, and acquirements, notoriously: e. g. The 
Guinea negro king could not conceive it possible that water could be soli- 
dified by cold, in the higher latitudes." This will be found to be a mere 
verbal sophism, deriving its whole plausibility from the unlucky use 
of a vague term, by the friends of the true theory. A truth is not 
necessary, because we negatively are not able to conceive the actual ex| 



48 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

istence of the opposite thereof; but a truth is necessary when we, posi- 
tively, are able to apprehend that the negation thereof includes an 
inevitable contradiction. It is not that we cannot see how the opposite 
comes to be true, but it is that we are able to see that the opposite can- 
not possibly be true. Let any man consult his consciousness : is not 
the proposition, "a whole is greater than its parts," seen by the mind 
in a light of necessity, totally different from this: "The natives of 
Guinea are generally black, of Erigland generally white ?" Yet the 
latter is as true as the former ! 

They are universal 1 — Last, on this head, sensationalists ring many 
changes on the assertion that axiomatic beliefs are not held by all men 
alike ; that there is debate what are axioms, and the widest differences; 
and that some things long held to be necessary truths, (e. g. Ex nihilo 
nihil fit; Nature abhors a vacuum.; a body cannot act without a medium 
on another with which it is not present,) are now found not only to be 
not axioms, but not true at all. I reply, all this proves that the hu- 
man mind is an imperfect instrument, as to its primary judgments; 
not that it has none. The same mode of objecting would prove, with 
equal fairness, (or unfairness,) that derived truths have no inferential 
validity; for the differences about them have been still wider. Man 
is often incautious in his thinking, unconsciously blinded by hypothe- 
sis, habit and prejudice; and thus he has sometimes (not so very often 
after all) failed to apply the tests of axiomatic truth carefully. Still 
the fact remains, that there are first truths, absolutely universal in 
their acceptance, on which every sane mind in the world acts, and 
always has acted from Adam's day, with unflinching confidence. On 
that fact I stand. 

Our own spiritual existence intuitively seen. — The remarks 
made in introducing my discussion of the immateriality of the soul, 
have already indicated the grounds on which we claim our belief in 
our own spiritual exigence as an intuition. In the propositions, Gogito, 
ergo sum, Des Cartes meant to indicate, what is undoubtedly true, 
that the very consciousness of thinking implies an intuitive perception 
of an existing substance that thinks.. But what better definition of 
spirit, as a something instinctively contrasted with matter, than that 
it is substance which thinks? 

Identity intuitively seen. — Locke made our very belief of our 
own identity, a derived notion, the simple result of our remembered 
consciousnesses. It may be very true that a second consciousness suc- 
ceeding a first, may be the occasion of the rise of our notion of iden- 
tity. But it cannot be the cause, for the identity of the thinking be- 
ing who has the two consciousnesses is implied a priori in those states. 
The word self cannot be comprehended by our thought, without com- 
prehending in it the notion of identity. And it has been well re- 
marked, that our belief in our identity cannot be a deduction, because 
it must be implied before hand, in our very capacity to perceive any 
relation between premises and conclusion. If the comprehension of 
the former is not felt to be the act of the same thinking subject who 
comprehends the latter, then of course there is no possibility of a 
logical dependence being perceived between them. 

Reality of the objective intuitively seen. — Once more, we as- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 49 

sert against Berkeley, and all other idealists, that our reference of 
our sensations to an external world as their cause; and that a world of 
substances, to which the mind refers the qualities which alone sensa- 
tion perceives, is a valid intuition. It is primary ; witness the notable 
failures of all the attempts to analyse it into something more primary, 
from Aristotle to Reid. It is necessary ; for the pure idealist can no 
more rid himself of the practical belief that is was an objective reality, 
and not a mere subjective notion of a pain, which caused him to feel 
that he had butted his head against a post. And it is universal. All 
minds learn it. And if we analyse the mental part of our sensation, 
we shall find that perception is, in its very nature, a perception of a 
relation between sensitive mind, and outward matter. Grant to the 
idealist even the assertion, that the v iind immediately knows only its 
own subjective states; yet, when it is conscious of the subjective part 
of what we call a perception, it still knows by its consciousness, that 
there was an effect which it did not induce upon itself. Surely this 
subjectivity must include a consciousness of its own volitions. So, of 
the absence of a volition of its own. Then, as the mind intuitively 
and necessarily knows that no effect can be without a cause, it must 
refer this phenomenon, the subjective act of perception, consciously 
uncaused from within, to some real thing without. 

4. Cause for every Effect intuitively believed. — But the in- 
tuition which has been most debated, and is of most fundamental im- 
portance to theologians, is our notion of causation. The doctrine of 
common sense here is, that when the mind sees an effect, it intuitively 
refers it to some cause, as producing its occurrence. Moreover, the 
antecedent something which made it to be, is intuitively apprehended 
as having a power to produce its occurrence; otherwise it would not 
have occurred. For the mind is impelled by its own nature to think, 
that if there had not been a something adequate to make the occur- 
rence to be, it would not have been. Nothing can only result in 
nothing ; and a thing cannot produce its own occurrence ; for then it 
must act before it is. Hence, also, this immediate deduction that this 
power will always produce the same result, when applied under the 
same circumstances. The occasion of the rise of this notion of power 
is, no doubt, as Morell has said, with many authors, our consciousness 
of our own volitions. Now, the sensational psychologists, at the head 
of whom stands Hume in this particular, deny all this; and say that 
our belief that similar causes will produce like effects, is only a pro- 
bable induction of our experience ; (so Mill, adding that this proba- 
bility rises to a practical certainty, as one induction concurs with 
another,) that the mind merely 'presumes the sequence will be repeated 
again, because it has been presented so often ; that since the mind is 
entitled to no idea, save what perception gives her, and the senses per- 
ceive only the two terms of the sequence, without tie of power between 
them, the notion of this tie is baseless ; and power in causation is 
naught. Dr. Thomas ;Brown, while he asserts the intuitive origin of 
our expectation, that like will produce like, and even argues it with great 
acuteness, still falls into the latter error, denying that the mind has 
any ground for a notion of power other than "immediate, invariable 
antecedence;" for this is all perception gives us. 



50 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Of no force to say: Power not perceived. — Now, our first re- 
mark, in defending the correct doctrine, is, that this argument is of 
no force to any except pure sensationalists. "When perception furnishes 
the occasion, a sequence, the reason, by its innate power, furnishes the 
notion of cause in it. Perception does not show us souls, not even our 
own; but reason compels us to supply the notion of soul as the subject 
of perceptions and all other states. Perception does not show us sub- 
stance in matter, but only a bundle of properties ; reason compels us 
to supply the notion of substance. And such an argument is pecu- 
liarly inconsistent in the mouth of Brown, who asserts that our belief 
in the recurrence of causative sequences is intuitive; for it is impossi- 
ble for the reason to evade the question, What except power in the 
antecedent can make the sequence immediate and invariable? The 
something that makes it so, is juit our notion of the power. 

The belief not derived from association. — Having thus rebutted 
objections to the true view, we return to show that the opposite 
one is unreasonable and absurd. The heterodox metaphysicians deny 
that we intuitively apprehend the fact, that every effect must have its 
proper cause, and vice versa : and the most plausible ground of denial 
is to say, that this presumption grows in our minds by the operation of 
the associating faculty. It is a law of our minds, that they are apt to 
repeat those sequences of thought, which they have had before in the 
same juxtaposition; and hence the habit grows up, of thinking of the 
same consequent, when we see the same antecedent; and we naturally 
learn to expect to see it. But I will show that the belief in cause is 
not the consequence, but the ground and origin of the association. 
For instance : man knows perfectly well that certain sequences which 
recur before him perpetually and regularly, as of light on darkness, 
are not causative; while he believes that certain others, as of light on 
the sun's rising, are causative. Now, if the associative habit had pro- 
duced the notion of causation, it would have done it alike in both 
cases; for both sequences recurred with exactly the same uniformity. 

Nor from Experience. — I remark, farther, that no experiences of 
the fact that a given antecedent had produced a given consequent so 
far as observed, could logically produce the conviction that it would,, 
and must do so everywhere, and in all the future, if it were not sus- 
tained by an intuitive recognition of cause and effect in the sequence. 
The experience of the past only proves the past; there is no logical 
tie which entitles us to project it on the future if we deny the intuitive 
one. Mow many experiences of a regular sequence entitle us to carry 
our expectations into the future? one hundred? 500? What then is 
the difference between case 499th and case 500th that the latter alone, 
when added to the previous past experiences, authorizes to say that 
now case 501st still in the future, must eventuate so and so? There 
is no reasonable answer. In truth, experience of a mere sequence, by 
itself, generates no confidence whatever, in its future recurrence with 
causative certainty. You may ask, does not a mere empirical in- 
duction (inductio simplicis enumerationis, Bacon,) the mere recur- 
rence of an observed sequence, beget in our minds even a probable 
expectation of its recurrence in the future ? I answer, yes, in certain 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 51 

sorts of cases; but this probable expectation proceeds from this: We 
know intuitively that the consequent in this sequence must have some 
producing cause, whether we have rightly detected it among the seem- 
ing antecedents, is not yet proved ; and hence two facts are inferred ; 
this seeming, visible antecedent may be the cause, seeing it has so fre- 
quently preceded; and if it be indeed the' cause, then we are certain 
it will always be followed by the effect. But we have not yet con- 
vinced ourselves that some unseen antecedent may not intervene in 
each case observed ; and, therefore, our expectation that the seeming 
antecedent will continue to be followed by the effect, is only probable 
It is, therefore, not the number of instances experienced, in which the 
sequence occurred, which begets our expectation that the sequence 
must recur in the future ; but it is the probability the mind sees, that 
the seeming antecedent may be the true one, which begets that ex- 
pectation. And if that probability rises to a certainty in one or two 
cases of the observed sequence, it may be as strong as after ten thou- 
sand cases. 

Illustration of the above. — This was ingeniously (perhaps un- 
intentionally) illustrated bjr some of the performances of the calcu- 
lating machine constructed by the famous Babbage. The machinery 
could be so adjusted that it would exhibit a series of numbers in an 
aperture of the dial plate, having a given ratio, up to millions. And 
then, without any new adjustment by the maker, it would change the 
ratio and begin a new series, which it would again continue with per- 
fect regularity until the spectators were weary of watching. Now, if 
a regular empirical induction, however long continued, could demon- 
strate anything, it would have done it here. But just when the ob- 
server had convinced himself that the first ratio expressed the necessary 
law of the machine, Presto! a change ; and a different one supercedes 
it, without visible cause. 

One instance cannot form a habit of association. — This intro- 
duces the argument, that it is not habit or experience which begets the 
belief in the regular connexion of cause with effect, because, in many 
cases, it arises in full strength after one trial. The child thrusts his 
finger in flame : the result is acute pain. He is just as certain from 
that moment, that the same act will produce the same feeling, as after 
ten thousand trials. It is because his mind compels him to think the 
primative judgment, " effect follows cause ;" and the singleness of the 
antecedent enables him to decide that this antecedent is the cause. 
Take another case : A. school boy, utterly ignorant of the explosive 
qualities of gunpowder, shuts himself up in a room with a portion for 
his boyish experiments. After finding it passive under many experi- 
ments, he at length applies fire, and there is an immediate explosion. 
But at the moment the tongs also fell on it ; and hence it may not be 
yet patent which of the two antecedents (simultaneous) was cause. He 
reeolves to clear up this doubt by another trial, in which the tongs 
shall not fall. He applies fire, excluding this time all other antece- 
dent changes, and the explosion follows again. And now this boy is 
just as certain that fire will inevitably explode any gunpowder that is 
precisely like this, provided the conditions be precisely similar, as a 



52 SYXLABUS AND NOTES 

million of experiments could make him. He has ascertained the tie 
of cause. 

In truth, as Dr. Chalmers well says, experience is so far from beget- 
ting this belief in the regular efficiency of causation, that its effect is, 
on the oontrary, to limit and correct that belief. A little child strikes 
his spoon on the table ; the effect is noise. At first he expects to be 
able to produce the same effect by striking it on the bed or carpet, and 
is vexed at the failure. Experience corrects his expectation : not by 
adding anything to his intuitive judgment of like cause, like effect; 
but by teaching him that in this case, the cause of noise was complex, 
not single, as he had before supposed, being the impact of the spoon 
and the elasticity of the thing struck. 

Kant's argument. — The subtile, and yet simple reasoning, by which 
Kant (Critick of Pure Reason. Bk. ii, Ch. 2, § 3,) shows the absurd- 
ity of resolving cause and effect into mere sequence, is worthy of 
your attention here. He suggests two instances : In one I look succes- 
sively at the different parts of a large house over the way. I perceive 
first, for instance, its front, and then its end. But do I ever think for 
a moment that the being of the end is successive upon the being of the 
front? Never. I know they are simultaneous. In another case, I see 
a vessel in the river just opposite to me; and next, I see it below me. 
The perceptions are no more successive than those of the front and end 
of the house. But now, can I ever think that the being of the vessel 
in the two positions is co-etaneous 1 It is impossible. Why? The 
only answer is, that the law of the reason has, by intuition, seen effect 
and dependency, in the last pair of successive perceptions, which were 
not in the first pair. The same vessel has moved ; motion is an effect; 
its cause must precede it. And this suggests the other member of his 
argument; In a causative sequence, the interval of time is wholly in- 
appreciable to the senses; the cause A and the effect B seem to come 
together. Now, why is it that the mind alwaps refuses to conceive the 
matter so as to think B leads A, and will only think that A leads B ? 
Why do you not think that the loud sound of the blow caused the im- 
pact of the hammer, just as often as you do that the impact caused the 
sound 1 Surely there is a law of the reason regulating this ! Now, that 
something, which determines the order of the sequence, is power. , 

The intuitive belief of cause necessary prior premise of all 
experimental induction. — Last, it is only because our judgment of 
cause is a priori and intuitive, that any process of induction, practical 
or scientific, can be valid or demonstrative. Bacon shows, what even 
J. S. Mill admits, that a merely empirical induction can never give 
certain expectation of future recurrence. To reach this, some canon 
of induction must be applied which will discriminate the post hoc from 
the propter hoc. Does not Mill himself teach the neceesity of such 
canons ? Inspect any instance of their application to observed sequences, 
and you will find that each step proceeds upon the intuitive law of 
cause, as its postulate. Each step is a syllogism, in which the intui- 
tive truth gives the major premise. 

Example. — Let us take a simp T e ca?e falling under what M'll calls 



OF LECTURES IN" THEOLOGY. 53 

his Method by Agreement. (The student will find my assertion true of 
either of the others.) The school boy, with his parcel of gunpowder, 
e. g., is searching among the antecedents for the true cause of the phe- 
nomenon of explosion, which we will call D. That cause is not de- 
tected at first, because he cannot be certain that he procures its occur- 
rence with only a single antecedent. First he constructs an experi- 
ment, in which he contrives to exclude all antecedents save two, A 
and B. The result D follows; but it is not determined whether A or 
B, or the two jointly, caused it. He contrives a second experiment, in 
which B is excluded ; but another antecedent event C happens along 
with A, and again D follows. Now we can get the truth. We reason 
thus : " In the first experiment, the cause of D must have been either 
A or B, or the two combined." But why f Besause the effect D 
must have had some, immediate, present cause. [But we know that no 
other immediate antecedent effects were present, save A and B.] This 
is our a priori intuition. Well, in the second experiment, either A or C, 
or the two combined, must have caused D. Why? The same intui- 
tion gives the only answer. But we proved, in the first experiment, 
C bad nothing to do with producing D; and in the second, B had no- 
thing to do with producing D ; because C was absent in the first, and 
B in the second. Then A was the true cause all the time. Why? 
Why may not B have been the cause, that time when it was present 1 
Because every effect has its own cause, which is regular, every time it 
is produced. The premise is still the intuition : "Like causes produce 
like effects." 

That which is necessary prior premise, cannot be deductIon. — 
It thus appears, that this intuitive belief is essential beforehand, to 
enable us to convert an experimental induction into a demonstrated 
general law. Could anything more clearly prove that the original in- 
tuition itself cannot have been an experimental induction 1 It passes 
human wit to see how a logical process can prove its own premise, 
wheu the premise is what proves the process. Yet this absurdity Mill 
gravely attempts to explain. His solution is, that we may trust the 
law of cause as a general premise, because it is " an empirical law 
coextensive with all human experience." May we conclude, then, that 
a man is entitled to ai'gue from the law of cause as a valid general 
premise, only after he has acquired " all human experience 1" This 
simple question dissolves the sophism into thin air. It is experimen- 
tally certain, that this is not the way in which the mind comes by the 
belief of the law; because no man, to the day of his death, acquires 
all human experience, but only a part, which, relatively to the whole, 
is exceedingly minute ; and because every man believes the law of 
cause to be universal, when he begins to acquire experience. The just 
doctrine, therefore, is that experimental instances are only the occa- 
sions, upon which the mind's own intuitive power furnishes the self- 
evident law. 

I have required your careful attention to this demonstration, because, 
as Hume's cavils have taught us, without the true doctrine of causa- 
tion, we cannot demonstrate the supernatural, nor even the existence 
of God. 



54 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

LECTUKE YII. 



SYLLABUS. 
SOURCES OF OUR THINKING. (Continued.) 

1. Is the Intuitional Reason a different faculty from, and of higher authority 
than the Logical Undei standing ? 

Locke's Essay, Bk. iv, Ch. ii, § 7. Moshiem Eccles. Hist., Cent. 17th, 
Sec. i, § 24. Morell, p. 125, pp. 161-168. 

2. To ascertain the origin of moral distinctions in our minds, state and refute 
the Selfish System of Morals, as held by Hobbes, and others. 

Jouffroy's Introduc. to Ethicks, Lect. ii. Dr. Thos. Brown, Lect. 78, 79. 
Cousin, Le Vrai, &c, Legon 12th. Morell, p. 71-75. 

3. State and refute the utilitarian theory, (as held by Hume or Bentham.) 
"Crimes of Philanthrophy," in the Land %ve Love, Dec. 1866. Jouffroy, 
Lect. 13, 14, Brown, Lect. 77, 78. Cousin, Le Yrai, &c. Legon, 13th. 
Morell, p. 215, &c. 

4. State and discuss Paley's form of the Selfish Svstem. 

Paley's Moral Phil., p. 24-60. (8vo. Ed.) Jouffroy, Ch. 15. Brown, Lect. 
79, 80. Alex. Moral Science, Ch. 1, 2, 3. Cousin, Du Yrai, du Beau et 
du Bien, as above. 

5. State and discuss the Sentimental Theory of Dr. Adam Smith. 
Jouffroy, Lect. 16-18. Brown, Lect. 80-81. 

1. Transcendetalists claim primitive judgments licentiously. 
— After Bacon, the first analysts of the laws of thought, such as Hobbes 
and Locke, set out with the fascinating idea of accepting nothing upon 
trust, and bringing everything to the test of experimental proof. 
The miserable sensationalism and materialism to which this led in the 
hands of Priestly in England, and Condillac in France, taught men to 
reflect, that unless some primary judgments are allowed to start from, 
there can be no beginning at all; so that some truths must have a prior 
authority than that of proof. By what faculty, then, are they per- 
ceived 1 Transcendentalists, from Spinoza to the modern, have all an- 
swered, by the intuitive reason : whose sight is direct intellection, 
whose conclusions are super-logical, and not, therefore, amenable to 
logical refutation. The frightful license of dogmatizing, to which 
these schools have proceeded, shows the motive : it is to enjoy an eman- 
cipation from the logical obligations of proving dogmas. Do we say 
to them, Your assertions do not seem to us true, and we disprove them 
thus and thus; they reply, " Ah, that is by your plodding, logical un- 
derstanding; intuitions of the pure reason are not amenable to it; and if 
you do not see that our opinion is necessarily true, in spite of objections, 
it is only because the reason is less developed in you." So the quarrel 
now stands. It seems to me obvious, therefore, that the next adjust- 
ment and improvement, which the science of mind must conceive, should 
be adjustment of the relations between intuitions and valid deductions. 

How resisted. Now, we might practically bring the transcendcn- 
talist to reason by saying, first, that they always claim the validity of 
the logical understanding, when they find it convenient to use it. [The 
very evasion above stated is a deduction, by one step, from false pre- 
mises !] Hence, consistency requires them to bow to it everywhere. 
Second ; we might apply the established tests of a true intuition to 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 55 

their pretended ones, primariness, necessary truth, and universality; and 
thus show that, when they profess by the pure reason to see dogmas 
which contradict or transcend the common sense of mankind, they are 
but making wild hypotheses. But third: I am convinced the radical 
overthrow of their system will be seen to be, at length, in this posi- 
tion : that the mind sees the truth of a valid deduction by the same 
faculty, and with equal authority, as an axiom or other first truth — i. 
e., when major and minor premise have a conclusive relation, and that 
relation is fairly comprehended, the reason sees the conclusion as im- 
mediately, as necessarily, as intuitively, as authoritatively, as when it 
sees a primary truth. 

All judgments intuitive and necessary, if valid. — To my mind, 
the simple and sufficient proof of this view of the logical function is 
in these questions. What is the human intelligence, but a function of 
of seeing truth 1 As the eye only sees by looking, and all looking is 
direct and immediate sense intuition, how else can the mind see, than 
by looking — i. e., by rational intuition? Whether the object of bod- 
ily eyesight be immediate or reflective, an object or its spectrum, it is 
still equally true that the eye only sees by looking — looking immedi- 
ately ; in the latter case the spectrum only is its immediate object. So 
the mind only sees by looking; and all its looking is intuition; if not 
immediate, it is not its own ; it is naught. One of the earliest, Locke, 
concurs with one of the latest ,McGuffey, of the great English-speaking 
psychologists, in asserting the view I adopted before consulting either. 
Locke's proof of it seems to me perfectly valid. He argues, {loco 
citato,) that if the mind's perception of a valid relation between a pro- 
position and its next premise were not immediate, then there must be, 
between the two, some proposition to mediate our view of it. But 
between a proposition and its next premise, there can be no other 
interi 



Objections solved. — But to this view many sound philosophers, 
even, would probably object strenuously : That the first great mark 
of intuitive authority, primariness, was lacking; that the position is 
utterly overthrown by the wide and various differences of opinion on 
subjects of deduction; while in first truths, there must be universal 
agreement ; and that it is inconsistent with the fact that many derived 
conclusions claim no more than a probable evidence. To the first, I 
reply, the action of the reason in seeing a deduced truth, is not indeed 
a primary judgment ; but the fact that the truth is seen only by rela- 
tion to premises, does not make the intellection less immediate and 
necessary. Just so truly as the first truth is seen to be necessarily 
true, so the deduced truth is seen to be necessarily true, the premises 
being as they are. Several of our intuitions are intuitions of relations. 
Why should it be thought so strange that these intellections by rela- 
tions should be intuitive 1 To the second, propositions called axioms 
have not always commanded universal agreement; and we are obliged 
to explain this fact by misapprehension of terms, or ignorance of rela- 
tions included in the propositions. Well, the same explanation ac- 
counts consistently for the differences men have, in their deductions; 
and the more numerous differences in this class of propositions is 
accounted .for by the facts, that while axioms are few, deductions are 



56 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

countless ; and in any one there are more terms, because more propo- 
sitions liable to misconception. But I do not assert, that in a valid 
syllogism, that if the major and minor are known to be true, and the 
terms are all fairly comprehended, the belief of the conclusion by the 
hearer is as inevitable, as necessary, as universal, as when an axiom is 
stated. Third; though in many deductions the evidence is but proba- 
ble, the fact that there is probable evidence, may be as necessarily ad- 
mitted, as in an intuitive and positive truth. 

II. Source of our moral judgments. — We now approach, young 
gentlemen, that great class of our judgments which are of supreme 
importance in theology, as in practical life — the class known as our 
moral judgments. Every sane man is conscious of acts of soul, which 
pronounce certain rational agents right or wrong in certain acts. With 
these right or wrong acts our souls unavoidably conjoin certain notions 
and feelings of obligation, merit, demerit, approbation or disapproba- 
tion, and desert of reward or penalty. It is this peculiar class of 
mental states which constitute the subject of the science of ethicks, or 
morals. All questions as to the nature and validity of moral judg- 
ments run into the radical question, as to their origin. Are they the 
results of a fundamental and intuitive law of reason? Or are they 
artificial, or factitious results of some other natural principles, devel- 
oped into a form only apparently peculiar by habit, association, or 
training 1 In answering this all-important question, I shall pursue 
this method, to set aside the various false analyses, until we reach the 
true one. 

The Selfish System. — The Selfish System, presenting itself in many 
varied forms from Hobbes (natural desire of emjoyment only motive) 
through Meandeville (the desire of being applauded is the moral mo- 
tive) down to Paley, has always this characteristic : it resolves our idea 
of virtue into self-interest. Its most refined form, perhaps, is that 
which says, since acts of benevolence, sympathy, justice, are found to 
be attended with an immediate inward pleasure, (self-approbation,) 
that pleasure is the motive of our moral acts. Discuss several phases 
together. 

Refuted. 1st, By intuitive beliefs of right and free agency. 
— I remark, that on the selfish system, the notion of right, duty, 
obligation, free agency, could never have arisen in the mind, and have 
no relevancy or meaning. Let man frame the proposition : " That 
which furthers self-interest is right;" the very employment of the 
word right betrays the fact that the mind recognizes a standard other 
than that of self-interest. And any analysis of the notion shows 
that it is utterly violated and falsified, when made identical with self- 
interest. Thus, Hobbes says, each man's natural right is to pursue his 
own natural self-interest supremely. But according to his own show- 
ing, this "right" in A implies no corresponding duty in him, and no 
obligation in his neighbour, B, to respect it, and no recognition on the 
part of any other. Any body has a "right" to prevent A from hav- 
ing his "right." Queer right this ! 

If interest is the whole motive, then, when the question arises, 
whether I shall do, or omit a certain action, you cannot consistently 
expect me to consider anything but this; whether or not the doing of 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 57 

it will promote my own advantage, and that in the form I happen to 
prefer. If I say, " This result will most gratify me," the argument is 
at an end ; my proposed act is, for me, right ; there is no longer any 
standard of uniform moral distinction. The same remark shows that 
the judgment of obligation to a given act is then baseless. Attempt to 
apply any of those arguments, by which Epicureanism attempts to inter- 
pose an "ought not" between a man and any natural indulgence ; 
(as this: "This sensual pleasure will indeed promote animal, but 
hinder intellectual pleasure, which is higher. And since pleasure 
is the rational chief good, you should profer the more to the less;") 
the reply is: "Animal joys are to me larger than intellectual ;" and 
the ground of obligation is gone. If no indulgence is less or more 
virtuous than any other, then no possible argument of obligation can be 
constructed, in the face of an existing preference, for refraining from 
any. If the sensualistic psychology is true, from which the selfish 
schemes proceed, then desire for natural good, which they make the 
only moral motive, is a passive affection of the soul. It is no more 
voluntary, when the object of desire is presented, than is pain when 
you are struck, or a chill when you are deluged with cold water. 
Where, now, is that free agency which, we intuitively feel, is rudi- 
mental to all moral action and responsibility'? Man is no longer self- 
directed by subjective rational motives, but drawn hither and thither 
like a puppet, by external forces. But if not a free, he cannot be a 
moral agent. Of course, also, there is no longer any basis for any 
judgment of merit or demerit in acts, or any moral obligation to pun- 
ishment. Penalties become the mere expedients of the stronger for 
protecting their own selfishness. And as this is as true of the future, 
all religious sanctions are at an end ! 

2d. From precedence of intuitive desire to calculation. — 
This theory teaches that this selfish pleasure apprehended by the mind, 
in acquiring an object, must always be the motive for seeking it. The 
analysis is false ; desire must be instinctive ; otherwise man could not 
have his first volition till after the volition had put him on the way of 
experiencing the pleasant result of the fruition ! Many desires are ob- 
viously instructive : e. g., curiosity. Now, since the self-pleasing can- 
not be the origidal element of the desire, it cannot be proved that this 
is our element of Tightness, in classifying our desires. See now, how 
this analysis would assign the effect as the cause of its own cause. A 
does a disinterested act. The consciousness of having done disinter- 
estedly gives to A an inward pleasure. This after-pleasure, proceed- 
ing from the consciousness that the act was unselfish, prompted to the 
act! Thus the effect caused its own cause! The absurdity of the 
scheme is further proved by this: If the fact that a disinterested act 
results in inward satisfaction to him who did it, proves that act selfish; 
then the fact that a selfish act usually results in inward pain to him 
who perpetrates it, proves that act to have been a disinterested one in 
motive. 

3d. "From intuitive difference of advantage and merit. — If 
the selfish theory of action were true, the adaptation of another per- 
son's conduct to confer personal advantage on us, should be synonymous 
with merit in our eyes, The yillian who shared with us the reward of 



58 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Ms misdeeds, to bribe us to aid or applaud him, would evoke the same 
sentiment of gratitude, as the mother who blessed us with her virtuous 
self-sacrifice ; and there would be no generic difference between the 
hollow flattery of the courtier for the monster on whose bounty he 
fattened, and the approbation of the virtuous for patriotism or benev- 
olence. 

4th. From vividness of unsophisticated moral sentiments. — 
If our notion of good acts is nothing but a generalization of the idea 
of acts promotive of our self-interest, he who has most experimental 
knowledge of human affairs (i. e., he who is most hackneyed in this 
world's ways,) must have the clearest and strongest apprehensions of 
moral distinctions ; because he would most clearly apprehend this ten- 
dency of actions. He who was wholly inexperienced, could have no 
moral distinctions. Is this so? Do we not find the most unsophisti- 
cated have the most vivid moral sympathies? The ignorant child in 
the nursery more than the hackneyed man of experience ? 

§th. From consciousness. No merit where self reigns. — But the 

crowning absurdity of the the theory appears here ; that our conscious- 
ness always teaches us, the pleasure we have in well-doing depends 
wholly upon our feeling that the virtuous act had no reference to self; 
and the moment we feel that self-pleasing was our prime motive, we 
feel that our moral pleasure therein is wholly marred. Indeed, the 
best and the sufficient argument against this miserable theory would 
perhaps be the instinctive loathing and denial uttered against it by 
every man's soul, who is rightly constituted. The honest man knows, 
by his immediate consciousness, that when he does right, selfishness is 
not his motive ; and that if it were, he would be utterly self-con- 
demned. As Cousin nervously remarks : Our consciousness tells us, 
that the approbation we feel for disinterested virtue is wholly disin- 
terested, and it is impossible for us to feel it unless we feel that the 
agent for whom we feel it was disinterested in this act; Thus, a thou- 
sand things in the acts, the language, and the consciousnesses of men 
are utterly irreconcilable with this hateful analysis, and show it to be 
as unphilosophical as degrading. Our crowning objection is found in 
its effect on our view of the divine character. That which is man's 
finite virtue must be conceived infinite, as constituting the virtue of 
God, (if there is a God.) His holiness must be only sovereign self- 
interest! 

III. Utilitarian Ethicks. — In the third place I group together 
three theories of the nature of virtue, which really amount to the 
same ; that of David Hume, who taught that an act is apprehended by 
us as virtuous, because it is seen to be useful to mankind ; that of Jer- 
emy Bentham, who taught that whatever conduct is conducive to the 
greatest good of the greatest number, is right, and that of some New 
Englahd divines and philosophers, who teach that virtue consists in 
benevolence. The latter is practically synonymous with the two former. 
For the practical expression of benevolence is beneficence. This theory 
of virtue is a natural off-shoot of Jonathan Edward's theory of virtue, 
which makes it love of being ; and its filiation may be seen by the re- 
mark just made above. These theories derive all the plausibility of their 
sophistries from three facts: It has been so often said, that "Honesty 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 59 

is the best policy," that men come to think the goodness of the policy 
is what makes it honest; to promote utility, or, in other words, to do 
acts of beneficence to mankind, is, in a multitude of cases, right and 
praisewarthy ; the duties of benevolence are duties, and a very exten- 
sive class thereof; but not, therefore, exhaustive of all duties. Once 
more, in the business of legislation, the expedient is very much the 
guide ; and crimes are punished chiefly in proportion to their tendency 
to injure the well-doing of 'society. This might easily deceive one who, 
like Bentham, was far more of a legislator than philosopher, to sup- 
pose that he had found in the beneficence of acts, the essential element 
of their virtue. He forgets that human laws propose as their end only 
the protection of human well-being in this world; and not the accu- 
rate final apportionment of merits. This is God's function alone. 

1st. It is selfish, in fact. — The utilitarian schemes of ethicks profess 
to stand in contrast to the selfish, because they propose not the sefish 
good of the agent, but the well-being of mankind, as the element and 
test of virtue. But they would really involve, as Jouffroy argues, the 
vice of the selfish systems, if consistently carried out to their last re- 
sult. For when the question is raised, " Why do men come to regard 
the utile as the light?" the answer must be, because well-being (natu- 
ral enjoyment) is the properest end of man. But thence it must 
follow, that desire of natural good is man's properest motive of action. 
Thus, the moral motive is as effectually left out of the analysis as by 
Hobbes himself; and the same absurd psychology is assumed, which 
makes desire for natural good the result of experienced good, whereas 
the desire must act fii'st, or the good would never have come to be ex- 
perienced. But more ; if desire for natural good is man's properest 
motive of action, it must follow, that his own personal good must 
always be the properest end of moral action ; because this must always 
be the nearest, most immediate object of the natural desire. These 
schemes make aggregate humanity the supreme object of moral action ; 
the true God. But the individual agent is a part of that aggregate ; 
a part of his own God ! And as he is the most attainable part — the 
only part for whose natural welfare he can labour effectually — I see 
not how the practical conclusion is to be avoided ; that he is his own pro- 
perest supreme end. Thus we are led back to the vilest results of the 
selfish system; and such, experience teaches us, is the practical ten- 
dency. While the utilitarian schemes profess great beneficence, they 
make their votaries supremely politic and selfish. 

2d. Utility not the conscious rule of obligation. — But far- 
ther; the scheme does not correctly state the facts of our conscious- 
ness. The mind does not feel that obligation to an act is always its 
mere utility or beneficence, nor that the merit of the agent arises out 
of the advantage his act effects. How often, for instance, do questions 
arise, as to the obligation of speaking truth ; where if the utility were 
the element of obligation, none would be felt; yet the mind would feel 
most guilty, had falsehood been uttered in the case. Again ; were 
utility the element of virtue, the Tightness or wrongness of an act 
would only be apprehended so far as experience had given us knowledge 
as to the beneficence or mischievousness of its effects. Is this so? 
Does not the conscience lash us for secret sins which leave no loss o 



60 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

reputation, health, or capacity behind them; and lash us all the more 
promptly and keenly, as we are inexperienced of crime and its wretched 
consequences ? Farther ; were this theory true, all truly useful things 
should affect us with similar sentiments of moral approbation, a con- 
venient bureau, or good milch cow, as truly as a faithful friend, or a 
benevolent rescuer. Does Hume attempt to escape by saying that it 
is the rational and voluntary useful act which affects us with the sen- 
timent of approbation'? Then, we reply, he has given up the case; 
for evidently the morality of the act is not in its utility, but in its 
rational motive. Once more ; if utility is the sole element of virtue, 
then the degree of utility should also be the measure of virtuous merit. 
We would always feel those acts to be most meritorious which were 
most conducive to natural good. But do we 1 e.g. Which ennobles 
Daniel most in our eyes : the heroism which refused to bow his con- 
science to an impious prohibition of his king, when the penalty was the 
lions' den, or the diligence which dispensed order and prosperity over 
one hundred and twenty provinces? And the extravagant conclusions- 
of Godwin must be accepted — that duties must be graded by us in pro- 
portion to the public importance of the person who was their object; 
so that it might be the son's duty to see his own father drown, in order 
to save some more valuable life, who is a stranger to him. 

3d If so, we might "do evil that good may come." — Were 
the utilitarian scheme true, it might be in some cases utterly impossi- 
ble to convince a 'man that it was immoral to " do evil that good might 
come." If the consequences of the evil act, so far as foreseen by his 
mind, seemed beneficial, it would be right to do it. Nor could the 
claims of retributive justice in many cases be substantiated ; the 
criminal who gave, by his penitence, sufficient guarantee that he would 
offend no more, could not be made, without immorality, to pay his 
debt of guilt. And above all, eternal retributions would be utterly in- 
defensible in a God of infinite wisdom and power. How can they ad- 
vantage the universe, including the sufferers, as much as thair pardon 
and thorough conversion would benefit them, without injuring the rest? 

IV. Palev's Scheme. — Paley's type of the Selfish System may be 
said to be equally perspicuous and false. That such a specimen of 
impotency and sophism in philosophy should come from a mind capa- 
ble of so much justice and perspicuity of reasoning as he has exhibited 
in the experimental field of Natural Theology is one of the most curi- 
ous facts in the history of opinion. I shall first attempt to rebutt the 
objections which he insinuates against the originality of moral percep- 
tions, and then criticize his own theory. 

Attacks originality of moral judgments. — He first proposes to- 
test the question, whether such distinctions are originally and intu- 
itively perceived, by supposing a case of what we call odious filial 
treachery, stated to a mind perfectly untutored by human associations, 
example, and teaching; and asking us whether he would immediately 
feel its vileness, with us. We answer, of course, No. But to show 
how absurdly preposterous the test is, we need not, with Dr. Alexan- 
der, dwell on the complexity of the moral problem involved. The 
simple answer is, that such a mind would not have the moral sentiment, 
because he would not comprehend the relations out of which the violated 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 61 

■obligations grew, nor the very words used, -to state them. In no pro- 
per sense could the untutored mind be said to see the case. Now, what 
a paltry trick is it, to argue that a mind has not a power of compar- 
ison, because it cannot compare objects which it does not behold at all? 
Attributes them to association. — Paley insinuates (none of his 
objections to moral intuitions are stated boldly) that our notions of the 
moral may all be accounted for by association and imitation. Thus, " hav- 
ing noticed that certain actions produced, or tended to produce, good 
consequences, whenever those actions are spoken of, they suggest, by 
the law of association, the pleasing idea of the good they are wont to 
produce. What association begins, imitation strengthens; this habit 
■of connecting a feeling of pleasure with classes of acts is confirmed by 
similar habits of thought and feeling around us, and we dub it the 
sentiment of moral approbation.'' (Borrowed from Hume.) Now, this 
analysis is -shown to be worthless in this one word. The law of asso- 
ciation does not transmute, but only reproduces, the mental states con- 
nected by it. How, then, can the feeling of pleasure, which begins 
from a perceived tendency in a class of acts to promote natural good, 
be changed by association into the pleasure of moral approbation 1 
They are distinct enough at first. Again : How, on this scheme, could 
men ever come to have pain of conscience at sins which are naturally 
pleasurable, and attended with no more direct natural ill 1 And how 
could the fact ever be explained, that we often have the sentiment of 
remorse for doing something in compliance with general associations 
.and imitation 1 

Objects, that they aire not referable to any simpler type. — 
Another class of objections is drawn from the facts that man has no 
innate ideas of the abstract element of moral right; and that moral- 
ists, though asserting the instinctive origin of moral perceptions, have 
never been able to point to any one type, or simple abstract element, 
(as veracity, &c.,) into which all moral acts might be resolved. After 
our criticism of Locke, no farther answer will be needed to the first 
objection. The second, when examined, will be found to be a bald 
begging of the question. The question is, whether the rightness of 
acts is an original perception of the human reason. Now, if it be, it 
will of course follow that it cannot be referred to some more general 
type of perception. Can this general idea, a truth, be analysed 1 
Why not? Because it is already simple and primary. Who dreams 
of arguing now that the human reason has no original capacity of per- 
ceiving truth in prepositions, because it has no more general and ab- 
stract type, into which the sorts of truth in different classes of propo- 
sitions may be referred ? So, of the idea of rightness. 

And variable. — Paley also borrows the common argument of ob- 
jectors, from the wide variety, and even contrariety of moral opinions 
in different ages and nations. In one nation, filial duty is supposed to 
consist in nursing an aged parent ; in another land, in eating him, &c, 
&c. The answers are, that no one ever pretended any human faculty 
was perfect in its actings, however original. Habit and association, 
■example, passion, have great influence in perverting any faculty. Next, 
as justly remarked by Dr. Alexander, many of the supposed cases of 
contrariety of moral judgments are fully explained by the fact, that 



62 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the dictate of conscience, right in the general, is perverted by some 
error or ignorance of the understanding. The Christian mother feels 
it her duty to cherish the life of her infant; the Hindoo to drown hers 
in Holy Ganges ! True. Yet both act on the dictate of conscience — ■ 
that a mother should seek the highest good of her infant. The Hindoo 
has been taught by her false creed, to believe that she does this by 
transferring it in childhood to heaven. Once more; it is a most erro- 
neous conclusion to infer that because men perforin, in some countries,, 
what are here regarded as odious vices, with seeming indifference and 
publicity, that therefore their moral sentiments about them do not 
agree with ours. An educated Hindoo will lie for a penny, and when 
detected, laugh at it as smart. A Hottentot woman will seem shame- 
less in her lewdness. Yet we are informed that the Hindoo reverences 
and admires the truthfulness of a Christianized Briton ; and that the 
poor Hottentot scorns the unchaste European missionary, just as any 
female here would. The amount of the case is, that conscience may 
be greatly stupefied or drowned by evil circumstances ; but her gene- 
ral dictates, so far as heard, are infallibly uniform. 

Paley's definition of duty, &c. — Paley, having succeeded to his 
own satisfaction, in proving that there is no sufficient evidence of moral 
intuitions existing in the human soul, gives his own definition. "Vir- 
tue is doing good to mankind, according to the will of God, for the 
sake of everlasting happiness." And moral obligation, he defines, as 
nothing else than a forcible motive arising out of a command of an- 
other. That this scheme should ever have seemed plausible to Chris- 
tians, can only be accounted for by the fact tnat we intuitively feel, 
when a God is properly apprehended, that His will is a perfect rule of 
right ; and that it is moral to do all He commands. But when we 
raise the question, why? the answer is, because His will, like His char- 
acter, is holy. To do His will, then, is not obligatory merely because 
an Almighty has commanded it; but He has commanded it because it 
is obligatory. The distinction of right and wrong is intrinsic. 

Objections. The System a Selfish one. — The objections to 
Paley's system are patent. He himself raises the question, wherein 
virtue, on his definition, differs from a prudent self-love in temporal 
things. His answer is, the latter has regard only to this life ; the 
former considers also future immortal well-being. Brown well ob- 
serves of this, that it is but a more odious refinement upon the selfish 
system; defiling man's very piety, by making it a selfish trafficking, for 
personal advantage with God, and fostering a more gigantic moral 
egotism, insomuch as immortality is longer than moral life. All the 
objections levelled against the selfish system by me, apply, therefore, 
justly here. This scheme of Paley is equally false to our conscious- 
ness, which tells us that when we act, in all relative duties, with least 
reference to self, then we are most praiseworthy. 

Force may justify Sin. — But we may add, more especially, that 
on Paley's scheme of obligation, it is hard tso see how he could deny 
that there may be, in some cases, as real a moral obligation to do wrong 
as to do right. A company of violent men overpower me, and com- 
mand me, on pain of instant death, to burn down my neighbour's 
dwelling. Here is " a forcible motive arising from the command of 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 6$ 

another." Why does it not constitute a moral obligation to the crime? 
Paley would reply, because God commands me not to burn it, on pain 
of eternal death ; and this obligation destroys the other, because the 
motive is vastly more forcible. It seems, then, that in God's case, it is 
His might which make His right., 

No OBLIGATION WITHOUT REVELATION. And NO VIRTUE IN GoD. — - 

Once more. On Paley's scheme, there could be no morality, nor moral 
obligation, where there is no revelation from God ; because neither 
the rule, nor motive, nor obligation of virtue exists. They do not 
exist indeed, Paley might reply, in the form of a revealed theology ; 
but they are there in the teachings and evidences of Natural Theology. 
" The heathen which have not the law are a law unto themselves, their 
cansciences," &c. But if there are no authoritative intuitions given 
by God to man's soul, of moral distinctions, then Natural Theology 
has no sufficient argument whatever to prove that God is a moral being,. 
or that He wills us to perform moral acts. Look and see. And, in 
fine: What can God's morality be ; since there is no will of a higher 
being to regulate His acts, and no being greater than He to hold out 
the motive of eternal rewards for obeying ! 

V. Dr. A. Smith's Theory. — The ingenious scheme of Dr. Adam 
Smith, Theory of Mor. Sents. may be seen very perspicuously un- 
folded in Jouffroy. This scheme is by no means so mischievous and 
degrading as that of Hobbes, Hume, or Paley. But it is incorrect. 
Its fundamental defect is, that in each step it assumes the prior exist- 
ence of the moral sentiment, in order to account for it. For instance, 
it says: We feel approbation for an act, when we experience a sympa- 
thetic emotion with the sentiments in the agent which prompted it. 
But sympathy only reproduces the same emotion ; it does not trans- 
mute it ; so that unless the producing sentiment in the agent were, 
moral, it could not, by sympathy, generate a moral sentiment in us. 
It supposes conscience comes thus : We imagine an ideal man contem- 
plating our act, conceive the kind of sentiments he feels for us, and 
then sympathize therewith. But how do we determine the sentiments 
of this ideal man looking at our act? He is but a projection of our 
own moral sentiments. So, in each step, Dr. S. has to assume the 
phenomenon, as already produced ; for the production of which he- 
would account. 



LECTURE VIII. 



SYLLABUS. 
ETHICAL THEORIES. (Concluded.) 

1. "Whnt the true theory of the moral Distinction ond Obligation ? Compare 
it with that of Jouffroy. Is the moral Distinction seen by the Reason, or by a 
distinct faculty ? 

Bp. Butler's Sermons, viz : Preface, and Sermon on Rom. xii : 4, 5. Cou- 
sin, Le Vrai, Le Beau, Le BieD, Legon 14th. Alexander's Moral Science, 
Ch. 2-7, inclus., and Cb. 10. Jouffroy, Introduc. to Ethics, Lect. 1 to 3. 



84 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

2. Explain the moral Emotion involved with the moral judgment, and in con- 
nexion criticize the schemes of Hutcheson and Brown 

Cousin, as above. Alex., Mor. Sc, Ch. 6 toll. Dr. Thos. Brown, Lect. 
81, 82. Jouffroy, Lect. 19, 20. 

3. State the true doctrine of the supremacy and authority of conscience. 
Butler's Sermon on Rom. ii: 14. Alexander, Ch. 8, 9. 

4. What qualities are necessary to moral agency and responsibility ? 
Alexander, Ch. 13, 14, Dr. Thos. Brown, Lect. 73. 

1. Moral Judgments are intuitive. — Are moral distinctions in- 
trinsic ; and are they intuitively perceived ? We have now passed in 
review all the several theories which answer, no; and found them 
rmtenable. Hence, alone, we derive a strong probability that the 
affirmative is the true answer ; e. g. All the chemists endeavour in 
vain to analyse a given material substance into some other known one; 
hut fail. It is, therefore, assumed to be simple, and original. 

We must assume this of the moral sentiment; or else it is unintel- 
ligible how mankind ever became possessed of the moral idea. For 
every original and simple idea, whether sensitive or rational, with 
which our souls are furnished, we find an appropriate original power; 
and without this the idea could never have been entertained by man. 
Had man no eye, he would have never had ideas of light and colours; 
no ear, he could never have had the idea of melody; no taste, he would 
forever have lacked the idea of beauty. So, if the idea of Tightness in acts 
is not identical with that of truth, nor utility, nor benevolence, nor self- 
love, nor love of applause, nor sympathetic harmony, nor any other origi- 
nal sentiment ; it must be received directly by an original moral power 
in the soul. To this, in the second place, consciousness testifies ; the 
man who calmly and fully investigates his own mental processes, will 
perceive that his view and feeling of the Tightness of some acts arise 
immediately in his mind; without any medium, except the comprehen- 
sion of the real relations of the act; that their rise is unavoidable ; 
and that their failure to rise would be immediately and necessarily 
apprehended by all as a fundamental defect of his soul. There is, 
indeed, a great diversity in the estimation of the more complex details 
of moral questions. And man's intuition of those distinctions is 
often disturbed by three causes, well stated by Dr. Brown — complexity 
of elements, habits of association and prevalent passion. But, allow- 
ing for these, there is just the universal and immediate agreement in 
all sane human minds, which we expect to find in the acceptance of 
necessary first truths. In the fundamental and simple ideas of the 
moral, men are agreed. And in the case of any other intuitions, we 
have to make precisely the same allowances, and to expect the same 
disturbing causes. These, with the remarks I made in refutatation of 
Paley's objections, I think suffice to sustain the true theory on that 
point. 

Illustrated from Logical Judgments. — I hold, then, that as there 
is, in some propositions, (not in all — some are truisms, many are mean- 
ingless, and some so unknown as to be neither affirmed or denied,) the 
element of truth or falsehood, original, simple, incapable of analysis or 
definition in simpler terms, and ascertainable by the mind's intellec- 
tion ; so there is in actions, of the class called moral, an intrinsic qual- 
ity of rightness or wro?igness, equally simple, original, and incapable 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 65 

of analysis ; and like simple truth, perceived immediately by the in- 
spection of the reason. This quality is intrinsic : they are not right 
merely because God has commanded, or because He has formed souls 
to think so, or because He has established any relation of utility, benefi- 
cence, or self-interest therewith. But God has commanded them, and 
formed these relations to them, because they are right. Just as a pro- 
position is not true because our minds are so constructed as to appre- 
hend it such ; but our minds were made by God to see it so, because it 
is true. 

Some moral Judgments likewise deductive. — But understand 
me; I do not assert that all moral distinctions in particular acts are 
intuitively seen, or necessarily seen. As in propositions, some have 
primary, and some deductive truth; some are seen to be true without 
premises, and some by the help of premises; so, in acts having moral 
quality, the Tightness or wrongness of some is seen immediately, and 
of some deductively. In the latter, the moral relation of the agent 
is not immediately seen, but the moral judgment is mediated only by 
the knowledge of some other truths. If these truths are not known, 
then the moral quality of the act is not obvious. From this simple 
remark it very clearly follows, that if the mind's belief touching these 
truths, which are premises to the moral judgment, be erroneous, the 
moral judgment will also err. Just as in logic, so here; false premises, 
legitimately used, will lead to false conclusions. And here is the ex- 
planation of the discrepancies in moral judgments, which have so con- 
fused Ethicks. 

II. But there are several writers of eminence, who, while they sub- 
stantially, yea nobly, uphold the originality and excellence of man's 
moral distinctions, err, as we think, in the details of their analysis. A 
moment's inquiry into their several departures from my theory, will 
best serve to define and establish it. 

The Moral Distinction seen by the Reason. — a.) Seeing that 
the moral distinction is intrinsic; what is the faculty of the soul by 
which it is apprehended 1 (Bear in mind a faculty is not a limb of 
mind, but only a name we give to one phase or sort of its processes.) 
Does it apprehend it by its reason; or by a distinct moral faculty? 
Says Dr. Hutcheson, an English writer : By a distinct, though rational 
perceptive faculty, which he names, the moral sense; and describes as 
an internal sense — i. e., a class of processes perceptive, and also ex- 
hibiting sensibility. Says Dr. Alexander, The perceptive part of our 
moral processes, is simply a judgment of the reason. It is but an intel- 
lection of the understanding, like any other judgment of relations, 
except that it immediately awakens a peculiar emotion, viz : the moral. 
Now, it might be plausibly said that the reason is concerned only with 
the judgment of truth; and we have strenuously repudiated the analy- 
sis which reduces the moral distinction to mere truth. But it should 
rather be said, that the proper field of the reason is the judgment of 
relations ; truth existing in propositions is only one class. There seems 
no ground to suppose that the moral judgments, so far as merely intel- 
lective of the distinction, is other than a simple judgment of the rea- 
son ; because, so far as we know, wherever reason is, there, and there 
only, are moral judgments. 2d. If the faculties were two, the one, we 
might rationally expect, might sometime convict the other of inaccu- 



66 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

racy, as the memory does the reason, and vice versa. 3d. The identity 
of the two processes seems strongly indicated by the fact, that if the- 
reason is misled by any falsehood of view, the moral sentiment is infal- 
libly perverted to just the same extent. The moral motive is always 
a rational one. Some rational perception of the truth of a proposition 
predicting relation, is necessary, as the occasion of its acting, and 
the object of a moral judgment. The reason why brutes have not moral 
ideas, is that they have not reason. In short, I see nothing gained by 
supposing an inward perceptive faculty called moral sense, other than 
the reason itself. 

b.) Next, we notice the question : at what stage of its perceptions of 
the relations of acts does the reason see the moral distinction ? In 
each separate case, immediately, as soon as the soul is enough developed 
to apprehend the relations of the particular act ? No ; answers Jouff- 
roy ; but only after a final generalization is accomplished by the reason. 

Jouffroy's Scheme. — His theory is: 1. That in the merely ani- 
mal stage of existence, the infant acts from direct, uncalculating 
instinct alone. The rational idea of its own natural good is the conse- 
quence, not origin, of the experienced pleasure following from the grati- 
fication of instinct. 2. Thus experience presents the occasions upon 
which the reason gives the general idea of personal good; and the mo- 
tives of self-calculation begin to act. But 3d. The child also observes 
similar instincts resulting in its fellow-men, in natural enjoyment to- 
them ; and as it forms the general idea of its own natural good (Satis- 
faction of whole circle of instincts to greatest attainable degree) as its 
properest personal end, reason presents the general truth, that a simi- 
lar personal end exists for this, that, the other, and every fellow-man. 
Here, then, arises a still more general idea ; the greatest attainable nat- 
ural good of all beings generally ; the " absolute good," or "universal 
order ;" and as soon as this is reached, the reason intuitively pronounces 
it the moral good ; to live for this is now seen to be man's proper moral 
end; and Tightness in acts is their rational tendency to that end. This 
is rather a subtile and ingenious generalization of the result of our 
moral judgments, than correct account of their origin. This generali- 
zation, ,as made by the opening mind, might suggest the notion of sy- 
metry, or utility as belonging to the "absolute order," but surely that 
of obligatoriness is an independent element of rational perception] If 
the idea of rightness and obligation had never connected itself in the 
opening mind with any one specific act having a tendency to man's natural 
good, how comes the mind to apprehend the universal order as the obliga- 
tory moral end, when once the reason forms that abstraction 1 It seems 
to me that the element of moral judgment must be presupposed, to account 
for the result. Again ; the supposed process is inconsistent with correct 
idea of the generalizing process. That process does not transmute, 
but only colligates the facts which it ranks together. The general attri- 
butes which the mind apprehends as constituting the connotation of 
the general term, are precisely the attributes which it saw to be common 
in all the special cases grouped together. So that if a moral order 
had not been already apprehended by the reason in the specific 
acts, the mere apprehension of the universal order would not pro- 
duce the conviction of its morality. Experience would strengthen 
the moral idea. But nsually the most unhackneyed have it most 
vividly. But it is right to say, that Jouffroy, notwithstanding 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 67 

this peculiarity of his theory, deserves the admiration of his readers, 
for the beauty of his analyses, and the general elevation of his views. 

Sentimental Scheme of Dr. Thomas Brown. — c.) The ethical lec- 
tures of Dr. Thomas Brown, of Edinburg, are marked by great acute- 
ness, and nobility of general tone ; and he has rendered gallant service 
in refuting the more erroneous theories. He makes moral distinctions 
original and authoritative ; and yet allows the reason only a secondary 
function in them. The whole result of his analysis is this : when cer- 
tain actions (an action is nothing more than the agent acting) are pre- 
sented, there arises immediately an emotion, called, for want of a more 
vivid term, moral approbation, without any previous condition of self- 
calculation, judgment of relation in the reason, &c. This immediate 
emotion constitutes our whole feeling of the Tightness, obligation, meri- 
toriousness, of the agent. As experience gathers up and recollects 
the successive acts which affect us with the moral emotion, reason 
makes the generalization of them into a class; and thus, derivatively 
forms the general idea of virtue. Man's moral capacity, therefore, is, 
strictly, not a power of intellection, but a sensibility. The reason only 
generalizes into a class, those acts which have the immediate power of 
affecting this sensibility in the same way. And Brown's system de- 
serves yet more than Adam Smith's, which he so ably refutes, to be 
called the Sentimental System. The moral sentiment is with him 
strictly an intrinsic emotion. 

Now, it does not seem to me a valid objection, to say with Jouffroy, 
that thus, the moral emotion is made one among the sett of our natural 
instincts: and there no longer appears any reason why it should be 
more dominant over the others out of its own domain, than they over 
it; (e. g., more than taste, or resentment, or appetite.) For the very 
nature of this moral instinct, Brown might reply, is, that it claims 
all other susceptibilities which have moral quality, are in its own domain. 

Objection. 1st. Soul always sees, in order to feel. 2d. No 

VIRTUE WITHOUT RATIONAL, IMPERSONAL MOTIVE. 3d. ThERE WOULD 

be no uniform standard. — The truer objections are ; that this notion 
does not square with the analogies of the soul. In every case, our 
emotions arise out of an intellection. This is true, in a lower sense, 
even of our animal instincts. It is perception which awakens appetites. 
It is the conception of an intent to injure, which gives the signal to 
our resentment, even when it arises towards an agent non-moral. And 
in all the more intellectual emotions, as of taste, love, moral compla- 
cency, the view of the understanding and that alone, evokes the emo- 
tion in a normal way. The soul feels, because it has seen, How else 
could reason rule our emotions ? Surely this is one of our most im- 
portant distinctions from brutes, that our emotions are not mere in- 
stincts, but rational affections. Note, especially too, that if our moral 
sentiments had no element of judgment at their root, the fact would be 
inexplicable, that they never, like all other instinctive emotions, come 
in collision icith reason. Again: Dr. B. has very properly shown, in 
overthrowing the selfish systems of human action, that our instincts are 
not prompted by self-interest. He seems, therefore, to think that when 
he makes the moral emotion an instinctive sensibility, he has done 
all that is needed to make it disinterested. But an action is not, the-er 
fore, disinterested, because it is not self-interested. Then would our 



68 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

very animal appetites, even in infancy, be virtues ! The truth is : 
in instinctive volitions, the motive is personal to the agent; but not 
consciously so. In selfish volitions the motive is personal to the agent; 
and he knows it. Only when the motive is impersonal, and he knows 
it, is there disinterestedness, or virtue. Last ; if Brown's theory were 
correct, moral good would only be relative to each man's sensibility ; 
and there could be no uniform standard. An act might be good to 
one, bad to another, just as it presented itself to his sensibility ; as 
truly as in the sense of the natural good ; one man calls oysters good ; 
and another considers oysters bad; Whereas the true doctrine is, that 
moral distinctions are as intrinsic in certain acts, as truth is in certain 
propositions : and eternal and immutable. Even God sees, and calls 
the right to be right, because it is so : not vice versa. Dr. Brown fore- 
sees this ; and in attempting to rebut it, is guilty of peculiar absurdity. 
Why, says he, does it give any more intrinsic basis for moral distinc- 
tions in the acts (or agents acting) themselves, to suppose' that our 
cognizance of them is by a rational judgment, than to say, with him, 
that it is in the way they naturally affect a sensibility in us 1 The ca- 
pacity of having the intuitive judgment is itself but a sort of rational 
sensibility to be affected in a given way ; and, in either case, we have 
no ground for any belief of an intrinsic permanence of the relation or 
quality perceived ; than that our Maker made us to be affected so ! 
Thus, he betrays the whole basis of morals and truth, to a sweeping 
skepticism. Does not intuition compel us to believe that reason is af- 
fected with such and such judgments, because the grounds of them are 
actual and intrinsic in the objects? Dr. Brown goes to the absurd 
length of saying, that the supposed relations ascertained by reason her- 
elf, are not intrinsic ; and exist nowhere, except in the perceiving reason ! 
e. g., the relation of square of Hypotheneuse. Says he : were there 
nowhere a perceiving mind comprehending this relation, the relation 
would have no existence, no matter how many right-angled triangles 
existed ! Is not this absolute skepticism 1 Is it not equivalent to say- 
ing that none of the perceptions of reason, (i. e., human beliefs,) have 
any objective validity 1 There need be no stronger refutation of his 
theory, than that he should acknowledge himself driven by it to such 
an admission. 

The Moral State complex Illustrated by Taste. — The correct 
view, no doubt, is this: that our simplest moral states consist of two 
elements: a judgment of the understanding, or rational perception of 
the moral quality in the act; and an immediate peculiar emotion, 
called approbation, arising thereupon, giving more or less warmth to 
the judgment. In our moral estimates of more complex cases, just as 
in our intellectual study of derived truths, the process may be more 
inferential, and more complex. It has been often, and justly remarked, 
that the parallel between the rational aesthetic functions of the soul, 
and its moral functions, is extremely instructive. Psychology teaches us 
that rational taste (for instance, the pleasure of literary beauty in 
reading a fine passage,) consists of a judgment, or cluster of judgments, 
and a peculiar emotion immediately supervening thereon. The phe- 
nomenon of taste is, then, complex, consisting of an action of the in- 
telligence, and a motion of the sensibility. The former is cause; the 
latter is consequence. After the excitement of the sensibility has 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 69 

■wholly waned, the judgment which aroused it remains fixed and un- 
changed. Now, it is thus with our moral sentiments. A rational 
judgment of the intrinsic Tightness or wrongness of the act immediately 
produces an emotion of approbation or disapprobation, which is origi- 
nal, and peculiar. The whole vividness of the sentiment may pass 
away ; but the rational judgment will remain as permanent as any 
judgment of truth in propositions. The great distinction between the 
assthetic and ethical actions of the soul, is that the latter carries the 
practical and sacred perception of obligation. 

III. Conscience, what? Obligation, what? — Conscience, as I 
conceive, is but the faculty of the soul just described, acting with 
reference to our own moral acts, conceived as future, done, or remem- 
bered as done. When we conceive the wrongness of an act as done by 
ourselves, that judgment and emotion take the form of self-blame, or 
remorse; wherein the emotion is made more pungent than in other 
cases of disapprobation, by our instinctive and our self-calculating 
self-love, one or both. So of the contrasted case. And the merit of 
an action, looked at as past, is no other than this judgment, and feeling 
of its Tightness, which intuitively connects the idea of title to reward 
with the agent, i. e. Our ideas of merit and demerit are intuitions 
arising immediately upon the conception of the rightness or wrongness 
of the acts ; connecting natural good or evil with moral good or evil, 
by an immediate tie. Our ideas of desert of reward or punishment, 
therefore, are not identical with our sentiments of the Tightness or 
wrongness of acts, as Dr. Brown asserts, but are intuitively consequent 
thereon. Dr. B. also asserts, as also Dr. Alexander, that our notion 
of obligation is no other than our intuitive judgment of rightness in acts, 
regarded as prospective. Therefore, it is useless and foolish to raise 
the question : "Why am I obliged, morally, to do that which is right?" 
it is as though one should debate why he should believe an axiom. 
This is substantially correct. But when they say : whatever is right, is 
obligatory, and vice versa, there is evidently a partial error. For there 
is a limited class of acts, of which the rightness is not proportioned to 
the obligation to perform them ; but on the contrary, the less obligation, 
the more admirable is the virtue of doing them gratuitously. Such are 
some acts of generosity to unworthy enemies: and especially God's to re- 
bel man. That God was under no obligation to give His Son to die for 
them, is the very reason His grace in doing so is so admirable ! Obliga- 
tion, therefore, is not always the correlative of rightness in the act, but it 
is, always, the correlative of a light in the object. This is the distinc- 
tion which has been overlooked — i. e., a multitude of our acts have a 
personal object, God, self, a man, or mankind, one or more ; and the 
conscience in many cases apprehends, not only that the act would be 
right; but that such are the relations of ourselves to the object, that 
he has a right, a moral title to have it done, in such sense that not only 
the doing of the opposite to him, but the withholding of the act itself, 
would be wrong. In every such case, the notion of obligation arises. 
And that, stronger or weaker, whether the object's right be perfect or 
imperfect. 

Imperative of Conscience is intuitive. — The most important 
thing, however, for us to observe, is that every sane mind intuitively 



70 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

recognizes this moral obligation. The judgment and emotion we call 
conscience, carries this peculiarity over all other states of reason or 
instinct; that it contains the imperative element. It utters a command, 
the Tightness of which the understanding is necessitated to admit. 
Other motives, rational or instinctive, may often (alas!) overcome it 
in force ; but none of them can dispute its authority. It is as impos- 
sible for the mind, after having given the preference to other motives, 
to think its choice therein right, as it is to think any other intuition 
untrue. Conscience is the Maker's imperative in the soul. 

Must conscience misguided, be obeyed. — Hence, it must follow, 
that the dictate of conscience must always be obeyed ; or sin ensues, 
But conscience is not infallible, as guided by man' s fallible understand- 
ing : it is clear, from both experience and reason, that her fiat may be 
misdirected. In that case, is the act innocent, or wrong? If you say 
the latter, you seem involved in a glaring paradox ; that to obey would 
be wrong ; and yet to disobey would be wrong. How can both be true] 
If you say the former, other utter absurdities would follow. 1st. Truth 
would seem to be of no consequence in order to right; and the con- 
science might just as well be left uninformed, as informed, so far as 
one man is personally concerned therein. 2d. Each man's view of 
duty would be valid for him ; so that there might be as many clashing 
views of duty, as men, and each valid in itself; so that we would reach 
such absurdities as these : A has a right to a given object, which B has 
an equal right to prevent his having ; so that B has a moral right to do 
to A what is to him a moral wrong! 3d. Many of the most odious 
acts in the world, reprobated by all posterity, as the persecutions of a 
Saul, or a Dominic, would be justified, because the perpetrators be- 
lieved they were doing God service. 

Solution. — The solution of this seeming paradox is in this fact •' 
that God has not given man a conscience which is capable of mislead" 
ing him, when lawfully and innocently used. In other words, while 
lack of knowledge necessary to perceive our whole duty may often 
occur, (in which case it is always innocent to postpone acting,) positive 
error of moral judgment only arises from guilty haste or heedlessness, 
or indolence, or from sinful passion or prejudice. When, therefo; e., a 
man sincerely believes it right in his conscience to do what is intrinsi- 
cally wrong, the wrongness is not in the fact that he obeyed conscience, 
(for this abstractly is right,) but in the fact that he had before, and at 
the time, perverted conscience by sinful means. 

IV. What constitutes Moral agency. — We intuitively spprehendj 
that all agents are not proper subjects of moral approbation or disap- 
probation. Hence, the question must be settled : what are the ele- 
ments essential to moral responsibility? This can be settled no other- 
wise than by an appeal to our intuitions. For instance : we may take 
an act of the form which would have moral quality, if done by a moral 
agent — e. g., inflicting causeless bodily pain ; and attributing it to suc- 
cessive sorts of agents, from lower to higher, ascertain what the elements 
are, which confer responsibility. As we walk through a grove, a dead 
branch falls on our heads ; we feel that resentment would be absurd; 
much more disapprobation ; the thing is dead. We walk near our 
horse, he wantonly kicks or bites. There is a certain type of anger ; 



OF LECTURES IN" THEOLOGY. 71 

"but it is not moral disapprobation ; we feel still, that this would be 
absurd. Here, there is sensibility and will in the agent ; but no con- 
science or reason. We walk with our friend ; he treads on our corns 
and produces intolerable pain ; but it is obviously unintentional. We 
pass through a lunatic asylum ; a maniac tries to kill us. Here is sen- 
sibility, free-will, intention ; but reason is dethroned. In neither of 
these cases would we have moral disapprobation. A stronger man 
takes hold of our friend, and by brute force makes him strike us ; 
there is no anger towards our friend ; he is under co-action. We learn 
from these various instances, that free-agency, intention, and ration- 
.ality are all necessary, to constitute man a responsible moral agent. 



LECTURE IX. 



SYLLABUS. 
FREE-AGENCY AND THE WILL. 

1. Is man's conduct under a fatal necessity ? 

Alexander, Moral Science, Ch. 15, 16. Cousin, Le Vrai, &c. Legon 14. 
Joufft-oy, Lect. 4 and 5. Morell, Hist., Mod. Phil, on Hobbes and Sensa- 
tionalism, p. 74, &c, 299, &c. 

2. What constitutes Free-Agency ? State the theory of " Contrary Choice," 
•or " Indifferency of Will," and the theory of certain influence of motives. 

Turrettin, Loc. x, Que. 1, Que. 3, §1-4. Alexander, Chs. 16, 18, 19. Ed- 
wards on the Will, Introduc, and p. i. Morell, p. p. 299, &c. Reid's Phil- 
osophy. Watson's Theology. Institutes. 

3. Sustain the doctrine of the certain influence of motives, over volitions, 
and answer objections. 

Turrettin, Loc. x, Que. Edwards on the Will, Pt. iii. Alexander. Ch. 
16 to 19, inclusive. 

I. Man a free-agent, denied by two parties. — But is man a free- 
agent ? Many have denied it. These may be ranked under two classes, 
Theological Fatalists, and Smsualistic Necessitarians. The former 
argue from the doctrine of God's foreknowledge and providence ; the 
latter from the certainty, or, as it has unluckily been termed, necessity 
of the Will. Say the one party : God has foreknown and foreordained 
all that is done by rational man, as well as by irrational elements, and 
His almighty providence infallibly effectuates it all. Therefore, man's 
will is only seemingly free ; he must be a machine ; compelled by God 
(for if God had no efficacious means to compel, He could not certainly 
have foreknown) to do what God purposed from eternity; and, there- 
fore, man never had any real choice ; he is the slave of this divine 
fate. Say the other party, headed by Hobbes : man's volitions are all 
'effects : following with a physical necessity upon the movement of the 
preponderant desires. But what are his desires? The soul intrin- 



72 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

sically is passive ; its attributes are nothing but certain susceptibilities- 
of being affected in certain ways, by impressions from without. There 
is nothing, no thought, no feeling in -the mind except what sensation 
produced there ; indeed all inward states are but modified sensations. 
Hence, desire is but the reflex of the perception of a desirable object, 
resentment but the re-action from impact. Man's emotions, then, are 
the physical results of outward impressions, and his volitions the 
necessary effects of his emotions. Man's whole volitions, therefore,, 
are causatively determined from without. While he supposes himself 
free, he is'the slave of circumstances ; of fate, if those circumstances 
have been fixed by fate ; of blind chance, if those circumstances arise 
by chance. 

Replies to them. — Now, in answer to all this, it would be enough 
to say, that our consciousness contradicts it. There can be no higher 
evidence than that of consciousness. Every man feels conscious that 
when ever he has power to do what he wills, he acts freely. And the 
validity of this uniform, immediate testimony of consciousness, as 
Couiin well remarks, on this subject, must, in a sense, supercede all 
other evidence of our free-agency ; because all possible premises of 
such arguments must depend on the testimony of consciousness. But 
still, it is correct to argue, that man must be a free agent; because 
this is inevitably involved in his responsibility. Conscience tells us 
we are responsible for our moral acts. Reason pronounces, intuitively, 
that responsibility would be absurd were we not free agents. It may 
be well added, that when you approach revealed theology, you find the 
Scriptures, (which so frequently asserts God's decree and providence,) 
assert and imply, with equal frequency, man's free-agency. The king 
of Babylon (Isaiah xiv) fulfils God's purpose in capturing the sinful 
Jews ; but he also fulfils the purpose of his own heart. But we can 
do more than rebut the Fatalist's views by the testimony of our con- 
sciousness ; we can expose their sophistry. God's mode of effectuating 
His purposes as to the acts of free agents, is not by compelling their 
acts or wills, contrary to their preferences and dispositions ; either 
secretly or openly ; but by operating through their dispositions. And 
as to the latter argument, from the certainty of the will ; we repudiate 
the whole philosophy of sensationalism, from which it arises. True, 
volitions are effects; but not effects of the objects upon which they go 
forth. The perception of these is but the occasion of their rise, not 
the cause. When desire attaches itself upon any external object, ter- 
minating in volition, the whole activity and power are in the mind, not 
in the object. The true immediate cause of volition, is the mind's own 
previous view and feeling ; and this, again, is the result of the mind's 
spontaneity, as guided by its own prevalent attributes and habitudes. 

II. Freedom and necessity defined. Semi-Pelaganism and 
Calvinists. — What constitutes man a free agent? Say one party: 
the self-determining power of the will; say the other: the self-de- 
termining power of the soul. The one asserts that our acts of volition 
are uncaused phenomena, that the will remains in equilibrio, after all 
the preliminary conditions of judgment in the understanding, and emo- 
tion of the native dispositions are fulfilled, that the act of choice is 
self-determined by the will, and not by these preliminary states of soul 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. YS- 

tending thereto ; so that volitions are in every case', more or less con- 
tingent. The other party repudiates, indeed, the old sensational creeds 
of a physical tie between the external objects which are the occasions 
of our judgments and feelings; and attributes all action of will to the 
soul's own spontaneity as its efficient source. But it asserts that this 
spontaneity, like all other forces in the universe, acts according to law,.. 
that this law is the connexion between the soul's own states, and its 
own choices, the former being as much of its own spontaneity as the 
latter; that therefore volitions are not uncaused, but always follow the 
actual state of judgment and feeling, (single or complex,) at the time 
being ; and that this connexion is not contingent, but efficient and cer- 
tain. And this certainty is all that they mean by moral necessity. 

III. Will determined by subjective Motive. Arguments.— The lat- 
ter is evidently the true doctrine ; because, a) Our consciousness says so. 
Every man feels that when he acts, as a thinking being, he has a motive 
for acting so: and that if he had not had, he would not have done it. 
The man is conscious that he determines himself, else, he would not 
be free ; but he is equally conscious that it is himself judging and. 
feeling, which determines himself choosing: b) Otherwise there would 
be no such thing as a recognition of character, or permanent principles.. 
For there would be no efficient influence of the man's own principles 
over his actions; (and it is by his actions alone we would know his 
principles ;) and his principles might be of a given character, and his 
actions of a different, or of no character, c) Consequently there would 
be no certain result from human influence over man's character and ac- 
tions, in education and moral government. We might educate the 
principles, and still fail to educate the actions and habits. The fact 
which we all experience every day would be impossible, that we can 
cause our fellow-men to put forth certain volitions, that we can often 
do it with a foreseen certainty, and still we feel that those acts are free 
and responsible, d) Otherwise man might be neither a reasonable nor 
a moral being. Not reasonable, because his acts might be wholly un- 
controlled at last by his whole understanding; not moral, because 
the merit of an act depends on its motive, and his acts would be motive- 
less. The self-determined volition has its freedom essentially in this, 
according to its advocates; that it is caused by no motive. Hence, no 
acts are free and virtuous except those which a man does without hav- 
ing any reason for them ! Is this good sense 1 Does not the virtuous- 
ness of a man's acts depend upon the kind of reason which moved him 
to them 1 e) In the choice of one's summon bonum, the will :s cer- 
tainly not contingent. Can a rational being choose his own misery, 
apprehended as such, and eschew his own happiness, for their own sakes? 
Yet that choice is free ; and if certainty is compatible with free-agency 
in this the most important case, why not in any other ? f) Grod, an- 
gels, saints in glory, and the human nature of Jesus Christ must be 
certainly determined to right volitions by the holiness of their own 
natures, and in all but the first case by the indwelling grace, and the de- 
terminate purpose of God So, on the other hand, devils, lost souls, 
and those who on earth have sinned away their day of grace, must be- 
certainly determined to evil, by their own decisive evil natures, and 
habits ; Yet their choice is free in both cases. 

.g) If the will were contingent, there could b& no scientia media ; 



U SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

and we should be compelled to the low and profane ground of the So- 
c'nian ; that God does not certainly foreknow all things ; and in the 
nature of things, cannot. For the definition of Scientia media is, that 
it is that contingent knowledge of what free agents will do in certain 
foreseen circumstances, arising out of God's infinite insight into their 
dispositions. But if the will may decide in the teeth of that foreseen 
disposition, there can be no certain knowledge how it will decide. Nor 
is the evasion suggested by modern Arminians (i. e., Mansel's Lim. of 
Relig. Thought) of any force ; that it is incompetent for our finite un- 
standings to say that God cannot have this scientia media, because we 
cannot see how He is to have it. For the thing is not merely among 
the incomprehensibles, but the impossibles. If a thing is certainly 
foreseen, it must be certain to occur, or else the foreknowledge of its 
certain occurrence is false, h) Last, God would have no efficient 
means of governing free agents ; things would be perpetually emerging 
through their contingent acts, unforeseen by God, and across His pur- 
poses ; and His government would be, like man's, one of sorry expedi- 
ents to patch up His failures. Nor could He bestow any certain 
answer to prayer, either for our own protection against temptation and 
wrong choice, or the evil acts of other free agents. All the predictions 
of Scripture concerning events in which the free moral acts of rational 
agents enter as second causes, are arguments against the contingency 
of the will. But we see striking instances in Joseph, the Assyrians, 
Cyrus, and especially the Jews who rejected their Lord. 

j) The demonstration may be closed by the famous Reductio ad ab- 
surdum, which Edwards has borrowed from the scholastics. If the will 
is not determined to choice by motive, but determines itself, then the 
will must determine itself thereto by an act of choice; for this is the 
will's only function. That is, the will must choose to choose. Now, 
this prior choice must be held by our opponents to be self-determined. 
Then it must be determined by the will's act of choice— i. e., the will 
must choose to choose to choose. Thus we have a ridiculous and end- 
less regressus. 

Objections. That this makes us machines. — Now, the objections 
most confidently urged, are : a.) That our view makes man a machine, 
an intelligent one, indeed ; but a machine in which choice follows mo- 
tive by a physical tie. Ans. Man is in one sense a machine, (if you 
will use so inappropriate an illustration,) his spontaneous force of act- 
ing has its regular laws. But he is not a machine, in the essential point ; 
the motive power is not external, but is in himself. 

b.) That man acts against his own judgment. — It is objected 
that our scheme fails to account for all choices where the man acts 
against his own better judgment and prevalent feelings ; or, in other 
words, that while the dictate of the understanding as to the truly pref- 
erable is one way, the will acts the other way ; e. g., the drunkard 
breaks his own anxiously made resolutions of temperance, and drinks . 
I reply, No; still the man has chosen according to what was the preva- 
lent view of his judgment and feelings as a whole, at the time. That 
drunkard does judge sobriety the preferable part in the end, and on 
the whole ; but as to the question of this present glass of drink, (the 
only immediate object of volition,) his understanding is misinformed 
by strong propensity, and the delusive hope of subsequent reform, com- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 15 

birring the advantages of present indulgence with future impunity ; so 
that its judgment is, that the preferable good will be this one glass, 
rather than present, immediate self-denial. 

c.) That Repentance implies power of contrary choice. — It is 
objected that our repentance for having chosen wrong, always implies 
the feeling that we might have chosen otherwise, had we pleased. I 
reply, Yes ; but not unless that choice had been preceded at the time 
by a different view of the preferable. The thing for which the man 
blames himself is, that he had not those different feelings and views. • 
d.) It is objected that our theory could never account for a man's 
choosing between two alternative objects, equally accessible and desira- 
ble, inasmuch as the desire for either is equal, and the will has no 
self-determining power. The answer is, that the equality of objects 
by no means implies the equality of subjective desires. For the mind 
is never in precisely the same state of feeling to any external object 
or objects, for two minutes together, but ever ebbing and flowing more 
or less. In this case, although the objects remain equal, the mind will 
easily make a difference, perhaps an imaginary one. And farther : 
the two objects being equal, the inertia of will towards choosing a given 
one of them, may be infinitesimally small ; so that an infinitesimally 
small preponderance of subjective motive may suffice to overcome it. 
Remember, there is already a subjective motive in the general, to 
choose some one of them, possessing all the strength which is occasioned 
by the beggar's apprehension of the value of a golden eagle to him. 

e.) That man is not responsible if necessitated. — The leading 
objection echoed by Arminians against the certainty of the will, is, 
that if man is not free from all constraint, whether of motive or co- 
action, it is unjust in God to hold him subject to blame, or to commands 
to those acts against which His will is certainly determined, or to pun- 
ishments for failure. We reply, practically, that men are held blame- 
able and punishable for acts to which their wills are certainly deter- 
mined, both among men and before God ; and all consciences approve. 
This is indisputable, in the case of those who are overmastered by a 
malignant emotion, as in Gen. xxxvii : 4, of devils and lost souls, and 
of those who have sinned away their day of grace. The Arminian re- 
joins, (Watson, vol. 2, p. 438:) Such transgressors, notwithstanding 
their inability of will, are justly held responsible for all subsequent 
failures in duty, because they sinned away the contingency of their 
own -tfills, by their own personal, free act, after they became intelligent 
agents. But as man is born in this inability of will, through an ar- 
rangement with a federal head, to which he had no opportunity to 
dissent, it would be unjust in God to hold him responsible, unless he 
had restored the contingency of will to them lost in Adam, by the 
common sufficient grace bestowed through Christ. But the distinction 
is worthless: 1st, because, then, God would have been under an obli- 
gation in righteousness, to furnish a plan of redemption: but the Scrip- 
tures represent His act therein as purely gracious. 2d. Because, then, 
all the guilt of the subsequent sins of those who had thrown away the 
contingency of their own wills, would have inhered in the acts alone 
by which they lost it. True • that act would have been an enormously 
guilty one ; the man would have therein committed moral suicide. But 



76 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

it would also be true that the man was thereafter morally dead; and 
the dead cannot work. 3. The Arminian should, by parity of reason, 
couclude, that in any will certainly determined to holiness, the acts 
are not meritorious, unless that determination resalted from the being's 
own volvntary self-culture, and formation of good dispositions and 
habits. Therefore God's will, which has been from eternity certainly 
determined to good, does nothing meritorious ! 

But the more analytical answer to this class of objections is : that 
the certainty of disobedience in the sinner's will is no excuse for him, 
because it proceeds from a voluntary cause — i. e., moral disposition. 
As the volition is only the man willing, the motive is the man feeling: 
it is the man's self. There is no lack of the requisite capacities, if 
the man would use those capacities aright. Now, a man cannot plead 
the existence of an obstacle as his excuse, which consists purely in his 
own spontaneous emission of opposition. 

Certainty of the Will proved by God's sovereignty. — I have 
indicated, both when speaking of fatalism and of the impossibility of 
a scientia media concerning a contingent will, the argument for the 
certainty of the will contained in the fact of God's sovereignty. If 
He is universal First Cause, then nothing is uncaused. Such is the 
argument; as simple as it is comprehensive. It cannot be taught that 
volitions are uncaused, unless you make all free agents a species of 
gods, independent from Jehovah's control. In -other words, if His 
providence extends to the acts of free agents, their volitions cannot be 
uncaused ; for providence includes control, and control implies power. 
The argument from God's sovereignty is, indeed, so conclusive, that the 
difficulty, with thinking minds is not to admit it, but to avoid be- 
ing led by it to an extreme. The difficulty rather is, to. see how, in. 
the presence of this universal, absolute sovereignty, man can retain a 
true spontaneity. I began by defining that, while the will of man is 
not self-determining, his soul is. I believe that a free, rational Person 
does properly originate effects; that he is a true fountain of spontane| 
ity, determining his own powers, from within, to new effects. This is a 
most glorious part of that image of God, in which he is created. This 
is free-agency ! Now, how can this fact be reconciled with what we- 
have seen of God as absolute First Cause 1 

Yet Man under Providence is free. — The reconciliation may and 
does transcend our comprehension, and yet be neither unreasonable 
nor incredible. The point wbere the little circle of creature volition 
inosculates with the immense circle of the divine will, is beyond human 
view. When we remember that the wisdom, power, and resources of 
God are infinite, it is not hard to see that there may be a way by which 
our spontaneity is directed, omnipotently, and yet without infringement 
of its reality. The sufficient proof is, that we, finite creatures, can. 
often efficaciously direct the free will of our fellows, without infringing 
it. Does any one say that still, in every such case, the agent, if free as to 
us, has power to do the opposite of what we iuduce him to do ? True,, 
he has physical power. But yet the causative efficacy of our means is 
certain; witness the fact that we were able certainly to predict our 
success. A perfect certainty, such as results from God's infinitely wise 
and powerful providence over the creature's will, is all that we mean 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 11 

bj moral necessity. We assert no other kind of necessity over the 
free will. More mature reflection shows us, that so far are God's 
sovereignty and providence from infringing man's free-agency, they are 
its necessary conditions. Consider : What would the power of choice 
be worth to us if there were no stability in the laws of nature, or" no 
uniformity in its powers ? No natural means for effectuating volitions 
would have any certainty, whence choice would be impotent, and mo- 
tives would cease to have any reasonable weight. Could you intelli- 
gently elect to sow, if there were no ordinance of nature ensuring seed 
time and harvest ? But now, what shall give that stability to nature? 
A mechanical, physical necessity'? That results in naught but fatal- 
ism The only other answer is ; it must be the intelligent purpose of 
:an almighty, personal God. 

Motive, what? The Inducement not Motive. — Most important 
light is thrown upon the subject, by the proper answer to the question, 
what is motive? The will not being, as we have seen, self-moved, what 
is it which precedes the volition, and is the true cause ? I reply, by 
distinguishing between motive and inducement. The inducement is 
that external object, towards which the desire tends, in rising to choice. 
Thus, the gold seen by the thief is the inducement to his volition to 
steal. But the perception of the gold is not his motive to that volition. 
His motive is the cupidity of his own soul, projecting itself upon the 
gold. And this cupidity, (as in most instances of motive,) is a complex 
of certain conceptions of the intellect, and concupisence of the heart; 
conceptions of various utilities of the gold, and concupisence towards 
the pleasures which it could procure. The inducement is objec- 
tive ; the motive is subjective. The inducement is merely the occasion, 
the motive is the true cause of the resulting volition. The object which 
is the inducement projects no force into the thief's soul. On the con- 
trary, it is the passive object of a force of soul projected upon it. The 
moral power is wholly from within outwards. The action is wholly 
that of the thief's soul, the inducement is only acted on. The proof 
of this all important view is in this case. The same purse of gold is 
seen, in the same circumstances of opportunity and privacy, by two 
men ; the second is induced by it to steal : on the first it had no such 
power. Why the difference ? The difference must be subjective in 
the two men, because objectively, the two cases are identical. Your 
good sense leads 'you to explain the different results by the differing 
characters of the two men. You say : " It is because the first man was 
honest, the second covetous." That is to say, the causative efficiency 
which dictated the two volitions was, in each case, from within the two 
men's souls, not from the gold. Besides, the objects of sense are inert, 
dead, senseless, and devoid of will. It is simply foolish to conceive of 
them as emitting a moral activity. The thief's soul is the only agent 
in the case. 

Sensualistic view of necessity false. — This plain view sheds a 
flood of light on the doctrine of the will. A volition has always a 
cause, which is the (subjective) motive. This cause is efficient, other- 
wise the effect, volition, would not follow. But the motive is subjective ; 
i. e., it is the agent judging and desiring, just as truly as the volition 
is the agent choosing. And this subjective desire, causative of the 



78 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

choice, is a function of the agent's activity, not of his passivity. (See 
e. g. Hamilton, separating the conative powers from the sensibility.); 
The desire is as much of the agent's spontaneity (self-action) as is the 
choosing. Thus is corrected the monstrous view of those who deduced 
a doctrine of the necessity of the will from a sensuaiistic psychology. 
If volition is efficiently caused by desire, and if desire is but the pas- 
sive reflex of objective perception, then, indeed, is man a mere machine. 
His seeming free-agency is wholly deceptive ; and his choice is dictated 
from without. Then, indeed, the outcry of the semi-Pelagian against 
such a necessity is just. But inducement is not motive ; desire is an 
activity, and not a passivity of our souls. Our own subjective judg- 
ments and appetencies cause our volitions. 

Inducement receives its influence from the subjectite dispo- 
sition. — On the other hand, it is equally plain, that the adaptation of 
any object to be an inducement to volition depends on some subjective 
attribute of appetency in the agent. This state of appetency is a pri- 
ori to the inducement, not created by it, but conferring on the object 
its whole fitness to be an inducement. In other words, when we seek 
to propagate a volition, by holding out an inducement as occasion, or 
means, we always presuppose in the agent whom we address, some ac- 
tive propensity. No one attempts to allure a hungry horse with bacon,, 
or a hungry man with hay. Why? Common sense recognizes in each 
animal an a priori state of appetite, which has already determined to 
which of them the bacon shall be inducement, and to which the hay. 
The same thing is true of the spiritual desires, love of applause, of 
power, of justice, &c. Hence, it follows, that inducement has no power 
whatever to revolutionize the subjective states of appetency natural to 
an agent. The effect cannot determine its own cause. 

From this point of view may also be seen the justice of that philos- 
ophy of common sense, with which we sat out ; when we remarked that 
every one regarded a man's free acts as indices of an abiding or perma- 
nent character. This is only because the abiding appetencies of soul 
decide which objects shall be, and which shall not be inducements to 
choice. 



LECTURE X. 



SYLLABUS. 

THE RESPONSIBILITY AND PROVINCE OP REASON IN 
RELIGION. 

1. Have our affections which precede our moral volitions a moral character t 
Turrettin, Loc. ix, Que. 2. Alex. Mor. Science, Ch., 20, 22, 23, 27. Ed- 
wards on the Will, Pt. iv, § i. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. n 

2. Is man responsible for his beliefs ? . 

Alex., Mor. Science, Ch. 9. Univ. Lecture i. Review of Do., by Rev. C. 
R. Vaughan, So. Lit. Messenger, 1852. 

3. What is the proper province of Reason in revealed Theology ? 
Turrettin, Loc. i, Que. 8, 9, 10. Hodge's Outlines, Ch. ii. Milner's "End 
of Controversy." Hih'o Divinity, Bk. ii, Ch. v. 

I. Is concupiscence morally evil? — Wide difference of opinion 
has long prevailed, as to man's responsibility for his moral dispositions^ 
and feelings, and habits, leading to volitions. Philosophers of the 
Pelagian and semi-Pelagian schools say, that since responsibility 
is coextensive only with free-agency, man cannot have any moral 
praise or blame attached to dispositions ; for that they are not volun- 
tary is clear from the assertion that they cause volition. Hence, also, 
the definition of sin and holiness, as consisting only of wrong or right 
acts of the soul. But we argue that man is evidently praise, or blame- 
worthy for his dispositions, principles and habits, as well as for his voli- 
tions. We make our appeal here to consciousness, which causes us 
shame and self-reproach for evil propensities not ripened into volitions, 
and tells us that we would feel equal resentment for evil dispositions 
towards us and our rights, though never formed into the overt intention 
of injury. 2d. Our minds intuitively judge that the moral character 
of an act resides in its motives. Witness the process of investigation 
in the charge for crime before a jury. Indeed, the act of volition, 
nakedly considered, is a merely natural effect, and has no more moral 
character than the muscular motions which follow it. For the volition 
which extends the hand with alms to an enemy, or with a bribe to one 
to commit a sin, is the same physical volition we must go back of it, 
to the motive by which it was caused, to settle its moral character- 
That element is not in the naked volition; says the Pelagian, it is not 
in the motives prior to volition ; then it is nowhere ! 3d. The notion 
is inconsistent with our established idea about character. Here is a 
man who is said to have a dishonest character. It only becomes cog- 
nizable to us by his acts. He must, then, have performed a series of 
acts, having the common quality of dishonesty. Now, nothing comes 
from nothing ; there must be some cause for that sameness of char- 
acter ; and that cause is the prevalent disposition to steal separate from, 
and prior to, each theivish act. For the bad cause cannot be in 
the will itself; this would be peculiarly objectionable to the Pelagian. 
This, then, is what is meant when this man is said to have a bad char- 
acter. Has the word bad here, no proper meaning 1 Does the family 
of daughters, the separate acts, bear no relationship to their mother I 
4th. On the Pelagian scheme, the wickedness of sins of omission would 
be inexplicable. For in them, there is often no volition at all; and 
therein consists their wickedness. A man passing by the water sees 
an innocent child drowning ; the idea of rescue is suggested to his 
mind; but he comes to no choice, does nothing, and while he hesitates, 
the child sinks to rise to more. Is he innocent ] Our conscience de- 
clares that he is not. Now, we can consistently explain wherein he is 

not : viz., in the state of his selfish and indolent feelings. But the 

opposite party have no explanation. 
Answer to objection that the involuntart cannot be sin. — 

Their main argument has been hinted, that nothing can be moral which 



SO SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

is not voluntary. The answer is, that this is as true of our disposi- 
tions, in the sense essential to moral agency, as it is of our acts. Our 
dispositions cannot, indeed, be the results of volition, lying before voli- 
tion ; but are they not spontaneous f Does any external force compel 
us to feel them ? As the volition is the soul choosing, so the disposi- 
tion is the soul feeling, equally of its own accord. The matter may 
be tested thus. Would a disposition to a wicked act, (not yet formed into 
a purpose,) subsist for one instant in a perfectly holy breast? Would it 
not die in its very incipiency? just as the spark would go out in a 
vacuum? Said old General Woodson, when he quit his daily toddy of 
sixty years to join the temperance society : " I set my resolution so 
strong that it killed my inclination.'''' 

Answer to objection that Soul's essence cannot be depraved 
— Another objection is: that our theory of the immorality of evil 
dispositions would imply that the soul's essence is altered; or that de. 
pravity is a change in the substance of the soul : which would make 
God the author of sin, and man an unfortunate, sentient puppet. For 
say they, there is nothing but the soul and its acts ; and if you deny 
that all morality resides in acts, some of it must reside in the essence 
of the soul itself. The sophism of this argument would be sufficiently 
exposed by asking, what is a moral act. If you make it any thing 
more than a mere notional object of thought, an imagination about 
which we think, is it any thing besides the soul acting? Well; in the 
same sense, our moral dispositions are but our souls feeling. I reply 
again, and yet more decisively, that immoral quality is only negative — 
i. e., 'e 'amartia esti anomis. It is the lack of conformity to God's will, 
which constitutes sin. The negative absence of this principle of active 
conformity is all that is necessary to predicate. Thus, the idea of de- 
pravity's being a substantial change is seen to be out of the question. 

II. Man responsible for his beliefs. — The question whether man 
is responsible for his belief, is nearly connected with the one just dis- 
cussed. Many modern writer have urged that he is not, because 
belief is the necessary and involuntary result of evidence seen by the 
mind. Further, it is urged ; if the doctrine that man is responsible 
-for his belief be held, then the horrible doctrine of persecution will 
follow ; for erroneous beliefs being often very mischievous, if also 
criminal, it would follow that they ought to be punished by society. 
To the first, I reply, that while the admission of demonstrative proofs, 
when weighed by the mind, is necessary and involuntary, the voluntary 
powers have a great deal to do with the question whether they shall be 
weighed fairly or not. Inattention, prejudice against the truth or the 
advocate, heedlessness, guilty and wicked habits of perverting the 
soul's faculties : all these are voluntary ; and I fearlessly assert, that 
no erroneous belief on any important moral question can arise in a 
sane mind, except through the operation of one or more of these 
causes. In this, then, is the guilt of false beliefs on moral subjects. 
To the second objection, I reply, that it does not follow, because a man 
is responsible for his beliefs, he is responsible to his fellow-man. 
There are abundant reasons for denying the latter, which it would be 
.easy to show, if I were going into the subject of freedo:n of thought. 

Because Nature and Providence rule thus. — On the affirmative 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 81 

side, I remark, first : that all the analogies of nature show us a Provi- 
dence holding man responsible for his beliefs. If prejudice, passion, 
haste, inattention, prevents a man from attaching due weight to testi- 
mony or other evidence, as to the poison of a given substance, he ex- 
periences its effects just as though he had taken it of set purpose. So 
of all other things. 

Because all wrong beliefs have a criminal cause. — Second : 
Conscience clearly condemns many acts, based immediately on certain 
beliefs, which were sincerely held at the time of acting. Now, if the 
belief had been innocent, the act necessarily dictated thereby could 
not have been blame-worthy. Witness Paul confessing the sin of his 
persecutions. Indeed, since belief on moral subjects ought to, and 
must dictate conduct, if man is allowed to be a rational free agent, 
each man's own belief must be his own guide ; and hence, an act might 
be right to one man, and wrong to another, at the same time. A would 
have a right (because he believed so) to a thing which B had a right 
to; and so B would have a moral right to do to A. what would be to 
him a moral wrong! And farther; since whatever a man sincerely 
believed, would be right to him, truth would cease to be of any essen- 
tial importance. 

III. Province of Reason in Revealed Religion. — The question 
with which we close this brief review of the nature of man's primary 
judgments, has ever been of fundamental importance in the Church : 
" What is the legitimate province of Reason, in revealed theology ?" 
The pretended warfare between reason and faith has been waged by all 
those who wished to make a pretext for believing unreasonably and 
wickedly. On the one hand, it is possible so to exalt the authority 
of the Church, or of theology, (as is done by Rome,) as to violate the 
very capacity of reason to which religion appeals. On the other, it is 
exceedingly easy to give too much play to it, and admit thus the virus 
of Rationalism in some of its forms. 

Rationalism, What ? — All the different forms of rationalism, which 
admit a revelation as true or desirable at all, may be grouped under 
two classes. 1. Those who hold the proton pseudos of the Socinians ; 
that man is to hold nothing credible in religion which he cannot com- 
prehend. 2. Those who, like the modern German rationalists, make 
the interpretations of Scripture square with the teachings of human 
philosophy, instead of making their philosophy square with the plain 
meaning of revelation. Under the latter class must be ranked all 
those who, like Hugh Miller, in his Testimony of the Rocks, hold that 
the interpretation of the Pentateuch, concerning cosmogony, must be 
moulded supremely by the demands of geological theories, instead of being 
settled independently by its own laws of fair exegesis. Here, also, be- 
long those who, like A. Barnes, say that the Bible must not be allowed 
to mean what would legitimate American slavery, because he holds that 
his ethical arguments prove it cannot be right : Et id omne genus. 

Comprehension not the Measure of Truth. — The absurdity of 
the first class will be shown, more fully, when we come to deal with 
the Socinian theology. It is enough to say now, that reason herself 
repudiates such a boast as preposterous. She does not truly compre- 



82 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

hend all of any thing : not the whole nature and physiology of the 
blade of grass which man presses with his foot : nor the modus of that 
union of body and soul which consciousness compels us to admit. 
Every line of knowledge which we follow, leads us to the circumference 
of darkness, where it is lost to our comprehension ; and the more man 
knows, the more frequently is he compelled to stop humbly at that limit, 
and acknowledge his lack of comprehension. So that the most truly 
wise man is he who knows and believes most kings which he does not 
comprehend. Again, reason tells us that the ground of her assent is 
not the comprehension of all the relations of the proposition : but the 
view of its evidence. Now, if these things are just and true in all nat- 
ural knowledge, how much more true in the things of the infinite God 1 
The attempt of the Socinian to make a god altogether comprehensible, 
has resulted in a plan attended inevitably with more and worse incom- 
prehensibilities, yea, impossibilities, than they reject. 

On Rationalist Scheme, no Revealed Rule of Faith. — To the 
second class of rationalists, the simple answer which reason gives is, 
that such a revelation as they admit, is practically no revelation at all. 
That is, it is no authoritative standard of belief to any soul, on any 
point on which it may happen to have any opinion derived from other 
sources than the Bible. For each man's speculative conclusions are, 
to him, his philosophy; and if one man is entitled to square his Bible 
to his philosophy, the other must be equally so. Further, it is well 
known that the deductions of allphilosophies are fallible. The utter 
inconsistency of Rationalism, with any honest adoption of a Revelation, 
appears thus: It is the boast of Rationalists, that human science is 
progressive : that our generation is far in advance of our fathers. May 
not our children be as far in advance of us 1 Things now held as sci- 
entific truth, will probably be excluded ; things now not dreamed of, 
will probably be discovered and explained. When that time comes, it 
must follow, on the Rationalists' scheme, that the interpretation of the 
Scriptures shall receive new modifications from these new lights of 
reason. Propositions which we now hold as the meaning of Scripture, 
will then be shown by the lights of human science to be false ! What 
is it reasonable that we should do, at this time, with those places of 
Scripture? Will anyone say, 'Reserve your opinion on them, until 
the light comes V Alas ! there is now no means for us to know where- 
abouts in the Bible they are ! No; we must attempt to construe the 
whole Scripture, as best we may. Will any one say that our construc- 
tion is true to us, but will be false to our more scientific children ? 
Hardly. If, therefore, the Bible is a revelation from the infallible God, 
reason herself clearly asserts that where the plain teachings of Scripture 
clash with such deductions, the latter are to be presumed to be wrong; 
and unless revelation carries that amount of authority, it is practically 
worthless. Rationalism is the wolf of infidelity sneaking under the 
sheep's clothing of faith. 

It follows, then, that reason is not to be the measure, nor the ground 
of the beliefs of revealed theology. 

But Revelation does not Violate Reason. — But on the other 
hand : 1st, the laws of thought which necessarily rule in the human 
soul, were established by the same God wno gave the Bible. Hence, if 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 83 

there is a revelation from Him, and if these laws of thought are legit- 
imately used, there must he full harmony between reason and Scrip- 
ture. But man knows that he is not infallible ; he knows that he almost 
always employs his powers of thought with imperfect accuracy. On 
the other hand, if revelation is admitted, its very idea implies infalli- 
ble truth and authority. Hence it is clearly reasonable that opinion 
must always hold itself ready to stand corrected by revelation. 

2nd. Necessary laws of Thought must be respected by it. — 
The Scriptures always address us as rational creatures, and presup- 
pose the authority of our native, fundamental laws of thought. If 
we think at all, we must do it according to those laws. Therefore, to 
require us to violate or ignore them fundamentally, would be to de- 
grade us to unreasoning animals ; we should then be as incapable of 
religion as pigs. 

3rd. Authenticity op Revelation not self-evident. — The claim 
which the Scriptures address to us, to be the one authentic and author- 
itative revelation from God, is addressed to our reaso». This is clear 
from the simple fact, that there are presented to the human 
race more than one professed revelation ; and that they cannot be 
authoritative witnesses to their own authority prior to its admission. 
It appears also from this, that man is required not only to obey, but 
to believe and love the Bible. Now he cannot do this except upon 
evidence. The evidences of inspiration must, therefore, present them- 
selves to man's reason ; to reason to be employed impartially, humbly, 
and in the fear of God. He who says he believes, when he sees no 
proof, is but pretending, or talking without meaning. 

4th. Revelation cannot authorize self-contradictions. Lim- 
itations of this admission. — Among those evidences, the reason must 
entertain this question ; whether anything asserted in revelations is 
inevitably contradictory with reason or with some other thing asserted 
in revelation. For if a book clearly contained such things, it would be 
proof it was not from God ; because God, who first created our laws of 
reason, will not contradict Himself by teaching incompatibles in His 
works and word. And again : in demanding faith (always a sincere 
and intelligent faith,) of us in such contradictories, He would be re- 
quiring of us an impossibility. If I see that a thing is impossible to 
he true, it is impossible for me to believe it. Yet here, we must 
guard this concession against abuse ; asserting, first, that the reason 
which is entitled to this judgment of contradiction concerning the 
Scriptures, shall he only a right, humble, and holy reason, acting in 
the fear and love of God ; and not a reason unsanctified, hostile, and 
blind. Second, that the supposed contradiction must be contained in 
the immediate and unquestioned language of the Scripture itself, and 
not merely deduced therefrom by some supposed inference. And 
third, that the truth supposed to be overthrown by it shall be also an ex- 
press statement of God's word, or some necessary, axiomatic truth, 
universally held by mankind. For if one should object against the 
Bible, that some inference he had drawn from its words were irrecon- 
cilable with some similar inference, or some supposed deduction of 
his human logic, we should always be entitled to reply : that his powers 
of thought being confessedly inaccurate, it was always more probable 



84 s¥LLABTJS ANH HOT El 

he had inferred erroneously, than that Scripture had spoken incon- 
sistently. 

5th. Reason and human knowledge ancillary to Revelation. 
—Reason is also to be employed to interpret and illustrate the Scrip- 
tures; To do this, the whole range of man's natural knowledge may 
be taxed. The interpretation is never to presume to make reason the 
measure of belief, but the mere handmaid of Scripture. And the 
mode of interpretation is to be by comparing Scriptnre with Scripture 
according to the legitimate laws of language. The Scripture must be 
its own canon of hermeneutics ; and that, independent of all other 
supposed rival sciences. For otherwise, as has been shown above, it 
would cease to carry a practical authority over the human mind as a 
rule of faith. A Bible which must wait to hear what philosophy may 
be pleased to permit it to say, and which must change its dicta as often 
as philosophy chooses to change, would be no Bible for any sensible 
man. 

Faith bests on Evidence, not dictation. — Now, the prelatic sys- 
tem of Church-authority stands opposed to this Protestant theory of 
private judgment. Prelatists claim for the reasonableness of their 
slavish system, this analogy: that the child, in all its primary educa- 
tion, has to accept things on trust as he is told. Human knowledge, 
say they, begins in dogma, not in reasoning. So should divine. The 
reply is, that this is a false analogy, in two vital respects. The secular 
knowledge which begins absolutely in dogma, is only that of signs; 
not of things and ultimate truths. The child must indeed learn from 
dogma, that a certain rafter-shaped mark inscribed on the paper is the 
accepted sign of the vowel-sound A. The things of God are not mere 
signs, but essential truths. Second, the reception of divine truth is 
not an infantile, but an adult work. We are required to do it in the 
exercise of a mature intelligence, and to be infants only in guile- 
lessness. 

Distinguish this system from Rationalism. — Prelatists and pa- 
pists are fond of charging that the theory of private judgment amounts 
simply to rationalism. For, say they, " to make revelation wait on 
reason for the recognition of her credentials, virtually gives to the re- 
vealed dogma only the force of reason. ' The stream can rise no ' 
higher than its fountain.' On the Protestant scheme, revelation 
receives no more authority than reason may confer." The only plau- 
sibility of such objections is in the words of a false trope. Revela- 
tion it is said, ' submits its credentials to the reason,' according to us 
Protestants. Suppose I prefer to say (the correct trope,) we hold that 
revelation imposes its credentials upon the healthy reason. In fact, as 
when the eye looks at the sun, there are activities of the organ towards 
the result of vision, such as adjusting the axes of the two balls, direct- 
ing them, refracting the rays, &c, and yet, the light is not from the 
eye, but from the sun ; so in apprehending the validity of the Bible's 
credentials, the light is from the Revelation ; not from the mind. Its 
activities about the apprehension of the evidence, are only receptive, 
not productive. 

But the simple key to the answer is, that the question which we 
bring to the human reason, ' Is this book God speaking ?' is one, single 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 85 

questions, perfectly denned, and properly within the reach of reason. 
The other question, which the Rationalist wishes to make reason an- 
swer, is : ' What are the things proper for God to say about Himself 
and religion?' This is, in fact, a multitude of questions, and mostly 
wholly above the reach of reason. We may illustrate the difference 
by the case of an ambassador. The court to which he comes is com- 
petent to entertain the question of his credentials. This is implied in 
the expectation that this court is to treat with him. The matter of 
credentials is one definite question, to be settled by one or two plain 
criteri ', such as a signature, and the imprint of a seal. But what may 
be the secret will of his sovereign, is a very different set of questions. 
To dictate one's surmises here, and especially to annex the sovereign's 
authority to them, is impertinent folly. But the messages of the 
plenipotentiary carry all the force of the recognized signature and 
seal. 

Moreover, we must remember that man's state is probationary. 
There is an intrinsic difference between truth and error, right reason- 
ing and sophism, and the purpose of God in revelation is (necessarily) 
not to supplant reason, but to put man on his probation for its right 
use. 

No strife of reason with Faith. — Last : Let the student, from 
the first, discard all the false and mischievous ideas generated by the 
slang of the " contest between reason and faith" — of the propriety of 
having " reason conquer faith, or faith conquer reason." There is no 
such contest. The highest I'eason is to believe implicitly what God's 
word says, as soon as it is clearly ascertained to be God's word. The 
dictate of reason herself, is to believe ; because she sees the evidences 
to be reasonable. 

I need only add, that I hold the scriptures to be, in all its parts, 
of plenary inspiration; and we shall henceforward assume this, as 
proved by the inquiries of another department. 



LECTUEE XL 



SYLLABUS. 
REVEALED THEOLOGY. GOD AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 

1. Give the derivation and meaning of the several names applied to God in the 
Scriptures. 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, Qu. 4. Breckinridge's Theol., vol i, p 199. Con- 
cordance and Lexicons. 

2. What is the meaning of the term, God's attributes ? And what the most 
common classifications of them ? 

Turrettin, Loc, iii, Qu. 5 and 6. Dick, Lect, 21. Breckinridge's Theolo- 
gy, vol. 1, p. 260, &c. 



86 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

3. What are the Scriptural evidences for God's unity, spirituality and simpt 
city? 

Turrett., Loc. iii, Qu. 3 and 7. Dick, Lect. 17 and 18. 

4. "What are the Bible proofs of God's immensity ? 

Turrett., Loc. iii, Qu. 9. Dick, Lect. 19. 

5. What is the Scriptural proof of God's eternity ? 

Turrett.. Loc. iii., Qu. 10. Dick, Lect. 17. 

6. Prove from the Bible, that God is immutable. 

Turrett., Loc. iii, Qu. 11. Dick, Lect. 20. On the whole, Charnock on 
Attr., at appropriate places. 

Infallibility of Scripture assumed. — In approaching the depart- 
ment of Revealed Theology, the first question is concerning the inspi- 
ration of the scriptures. This having been settled, we may proceed 
to assume them as inspired and infallible. Our business now is merely 
to ascertain and collect their teachings, to systematize them, and to 
show their relation to each other. The task of the student of Re- 
vealed Theology, is therefore, in the first place, mainly exegetical. 
Having discovered the teachings of revelation by sound exposition, 
and having arranged them, he is to add nothing except what follows 
" by good and necessary consequence." Consequently, there is no 
study in which the truth is more important, that " with the lowly is 
wisdom." 

1. God's Names reveal Him. — The New Testament, and still more, 
the Old, presents us with an interesting subject of study, in the names 
and titles of God, which they employ to give our feeble mind a con- 
ception of His manifold perfections. The names Jehovah, J ah, El, 
Adonai, Eloah, Elohim, El, Shaddai, and Jehovah Tsebaoth, in the 
latter, and Theos, Kurios, IIupistos, Pantokratob, in the former, give 
of themselves an extensive description of His nature. For being all, 
according to the genius of the ancient languages, significant of some 
quality,they are, when rightly interpreted, proof texts to sustain sev- 
eral divine attributes. 

Jehovah. — Jehovah, with its abbreviation Jah., (most frequently 
appearing in the doxology Hallelu Jah.,) has ever been con- 
sidered by the Church the most distinctive and sacred, because the 
incommunicable name of God. The student is familiar with the some- 
what superstitious reverence with which the later Hebrews regard it, 
never pronouncing it aloud, but substituting it in reading the Scrip- 
tures by the word Adonai. There seems little doubt that it presents 
the same radical with the substantive verb, hayah, in the future. 
[This is surprisingly confirmed in the Greek mythology, derived, as is 
known, from the Phoenician ; and for the origin of that, compare Gen. 
xxii: 14, with xx : 4, where Abimelek the Philistine, doubtless had 
the true name of God. From Jehovah, we have Jove\ (Latin, Jew 
Pater,) and its Greek synonym is Zeus, from Zeo, to live.] Along 
with this name is also to be classed the verbal from Ehiyeh. (Exod. 
iii: 14, explained by Jno. viii: 58.) In Ex. vi: 2, 3, we learn that 
the characteristic name by which God commissioned Moses was Jeho- 
vah. This is an additional argument to show that it means self-ex- 
istence and independence. 

This the Incommunicable Name. — Such a meaning would of itself 
lead us to expect that this name, with its kindred derivatives, is never 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 87 

applied to any but the one proper God ; because no other being has 
the attribute which it signifies. A further proof is found in the fact 
that it is never applied as a proper name, to any other being in scrip- 
tures. The angel who appeared to Abraham, to Moses, and to Joshua, 
(Gen. xviii: 1; Exod. iii : 2-4; Josh, v: 13; vi : 3,) was evidently 
Jehovah Christ. When Moses named the altar Jehovah-nissi, (Ex. 
xvii: 15,) he evidently no more di-eamed of calling it Jehovah, than 
did Abram, when he called a locality (Gen. xxii : 14,) Jehovah-jireh. 
And when Aaron said concerning the worship of the calf: "To-morrow 
is the feast of Jehovah," he evidently considered the image only as 
representative of the true God. But the last and crowning evidence 
that this name is always distinctive, is that God expressly reserves it 
to Himself. (See Exod. iii: 15; xv : 3 ; xx : 2; Ps. lxxxiii: 18; Is. 
xlii: 8; lxviii : 2; Amos v: 8 ; ix : 6.) The chief value of this fact 
is not only to vindicate to God exclusively the attribute of self-exist- 
ence; but to greatly strengthen the aigument for the divinity of 
Christ. When we find the incommunicable name given to Him, it is 
the strongest proof that He is very God. 

Other Names. — Adonai, the Lord, a pluralis exceUentice, is the 
equivalent of the Greek kttrios. It is never applied, so far as I know, 
to any other than God. Its meaning is possession and dominion, ex- 
pressed by the word Dominus, which in Vulg., is the current transla- 
tion both for it and Jehovah. 

Shaddai is also a pluralis excellent io?., expressing omnipotence. Some- 
times (as Job v. 17,) it stands by itself; sometimes (as Gen. xvii: 1,) 
it is connected with El. This seems to be the name by which God 
entered technically into covenant with Abraham. It appears in the 
New Testament in its Greek version Pantokrator. (Rev. i: 18.) Ely on 
is said to be a verbal adjective from 'azah, " to ascend," is rendered 
in Ps. ix : 8 ; xxi : 3, Most High. It signifies the exaltation of God's 
character. 

Tzeb'doth is frequently used as an epithet qualifying one of the other 
names of God, as Jehovah of Hosts, (sc. exercituum.) In this title, 
the heavenly bodies, orders of sentient creatures, &c, are represented 
as obeying God, as the bands of an army their Genei-al. 

Communicable Names. — We come now to what may be called the 
communicable names of God — i. e., those used to express false gods or 
imaginary mighty men, &c, as well as the true. It is a striking pecu- 
liarity, that these alone are subjected to inflection by taking on the 
construct state, and pronominal suffixes. They are El, expressing 
the idea of might, and Eloah, Elohim, the singular and plural form of 
the same, derived from the verb eloch" to reverence." The singular 
is said to be used only in books of poetry. The plural (majestatis,) 
is the common word used by God, and translated Theos, Deus, God, 
expressing the simple idea of His divinity, as God of creation and 
providence. 

Gathering up these names alone, and comprehending their conjoined 
force according to the genius of Oriental language, we find that they 
compose by themselves an extensive revelation of God's nature. They 
clearly show Him to be self-existent, independent, immutable and 
eternal; Ehyeh Jehovah, infinite in perfections, exalted in majesty, 



88 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

almighty in power, and of universal dominion. We shall find all of 
God implicitly, in these traits. 

The scriptures give to God a number of expressive metaphorical 
titles (which some very inaccurately and needlessly would classify as 
His Metaphorical attributes, whereas they express, not attributes, but 
relations,) such as ' King,' ' Lawgiver,' ' Judge,' ' Rock,' ' Tower,' ' De- 
liverer,' 'Shepherd,' 'Husbandman,' 'Father,' &c. These cannot be 
properly called His names. 

II. Attributes what ? Identical -with Essence ? — God's at- 
tributes are those permanent, or essential qualities of His nature, which 
He has made known to us in His word. When we say they are essen- 
tial qualities, we do not mean that they compose His substance, as parts 
thereof making up a whole : still less, that they are members, attached 
to God, by which He acts. They are traits qualifying His nature al- 
ways, and making it the nature it is. The question whether God's 
attributes are paints of His essence, has divided not only scholastics, 
Socinians and orthodox, but even Mohammedans ; affecting, as it. does, 
the proper conception of His unity and simplicity. We must repu- 
diate the gross idea that they are parts of His substance, or members 
attached to it ; for then He would be susceptible of division, and so of 
destruction. His substance is a unit, a unicity. God's omniscience, 
e. g., is not something attached to His substance, whereby He knows ; 
but only a power or quality of knowing, qualifying His infinite sub- 
stance itself. To avoid this gross error, the scholastics, (including 
many Protestants,) used to say that God's essence, and each or every 
attribute, are identical; i. e., that His whole essence is identical with 
each attribute. They were accustomed to say, that God's knowing is 
God, God's willing is God, or that the whole God is in every act ; and 
this they supposed to be necessary to a proper conception of His sim- 
plicity. Now, as before remarked, in Lecture iv, Natural Theology, 
if all this means any more than what I expressed above, it is panthe- 
ism. If it only mean's that God's knowledge is but the Infinite Spirit 
knowing, then it is merely stating in unintelligible language, what I 
have already stated ; and what is as true in its finite measure, of the 
attributes of human spirits, as in its infinite sense, of God's attributes. 

God is infinite, and therefore incomprehensible, for our minds, in His 
essence. (Job xi: 7-9.) Now, since our only way of knowing His 
essence is as we know the attributes which (in our poor shortcoming 
phrase) compose it, each of God's attributes and acts must have an 
element of incomprehensible about it. (See Job xxvi : 14 ; Ps. cxxxix : 
5, 6; Is. xl : 28; Rom. xi: 33.) One of the most important attain- 
ments for you to make, therefore, is for you to rid your minds for 
once and all, of the notion, that you either do or can comprehend the 
whole of what is expressed of any of God's attributes. Yet there is 
solid truth in our apprehension of them up to our limited measure — 
i. e., our conceptions of them, if scriptural, will be not essentially 
false, but ouly defective. Of this, we have this twofold warrant : 
First, that God has told us we are, in our own rational and moral at- 
tributes, formed in His image, so that His infinite, are the norniae of 
our finite essential qualities ; and second, that God has chosen such 
and such human words (as wisdom, rectitude, knowledge,) to express 
these divine attributes, The Bible does not use words dishonestly. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 89 

Are the Separate Attributes of Infinite Number ? — Another 
question has been raised by orthodox divines, (e. g., Breckinridge,) 
whether since God's essence is infinite, we must not conceive of it as 
having an infinite number of distinct attributes. That is, whatever 
may be the revelations of Himself made by God in word and works, 
and however numerous and glorious the essential attributes displayed 
therein, an infinite number of other attributes still remain, not dreamed 
of by His wisest creatures. The origin of this notion seems to be 
very clearly in Spinozism, which sought to identify the multifarious 
universe and God, by making all the kinds of beings, however nu- 
merous and diverse, modes of His attributes. Now, if the question is 
asked, can a finite mind prove that this circle of attributes revealed in 
the Scriptures which seem to us to present a God so perfect, so totus 
teres et rotundus, are the only distinct essential attributes His essence 
has, I shall freely answer, no. By the very reason that the essence is 
infinite and incomprehensible, it must follow that a finite mind can 
never know whether He has exhausted the enumeration of the distinct 
qualities thereof or not, any more than He can fully comprehend one 
of them. But if it be said that the infinitude of the essence necessi- 
tates an infinite number of distinct attributes, I again say, no ; for 
would not one infinite attribute mark the essence as infinite ? Man 
cannot reason here. But the same attribute may exhibit numberless 
varied acts. 

Classifications of Attributes. — In most sciences, classification of 
special objects of study, is of prime importance, for two reasons. The 
study of resemblances and diversities, on which classifications pro- 
ceed, aids us in learning the individuals classified more accurately. 
The objects are so exceedingly numerous, that unless general classes 
were formed, of which general propositions could be predicated, the 
memory would be overwhelmed, and the task of science endless. The 
latter reason has very slight application, in treating God's attributes ; 
because their known number is not great. The former reason applies 
very fairly. Many classifications have been proposed, of which I will 
state the chief. 

a.) Into Communicable and Incommunicable. — The old orthodox 
classification was into communicable and incommunicable. Thus, om- 
niscience was called a communicable attribute ; because God confers 
on angels and men, not identically His omnisciences, or a part of it, 
but an attribute of knowledge having a likeness, in its lower degree, 
to His. His eternity is called an incommunicable attribute, because 
man has, and can have nothing like it, in any finite measure even. In 
some of the attributes, as God's independence and self-existence, this 
distinction may be maintained ; but in many others to which it is usu- 
ally applied, it seems of little accuracy. For instance, God's eternity 
may be stated as Sis infinite relation to duration. Man's finite life is 
his finite relation to duration, and I see not but the analogy is about 
as close between this and God's eternity, as between man's little know- 
ledge, and His omniscience. 

b.) Into Relative and Absolute. — Another distribution, proposed 
by others, is into absolute and relative. God's immensity, for instance, 
is His absolute attribute ; His omnipresence His corresponding relative 



90 SYLLABtJS AND NOTES 

attribute. The distinction happens to he pretty accurate in this case, 
but it would be impossible to carry it through the whole. 

c.) Into Natural and Moral. — Another distribution is into natu- 
ral and moral attributes ; the natural being those which qualify God's 
being as an infinite spirit merely — e. g., omniscience, power, ubiquity; 
the moral being those which qualify Him as amoral Being, viz., right- 
eousness, truth, goodness, and holiness. This distinction is just and 
accurate, but the terms are bungling. For God's moral attributes are 
as truly natural (i. e., original,) as the others. 

The distribution into negative and positive, and the Cartesian, into 
internal (intellect and will) and external, need not be more than men- 
tioned. Dr. Breckinridge has proposed a more numerous classification, 
into ■primary, viz : those belonging to God as simply being essential, 
viz: those qualifying His being as pure spirit; natural, viz: those con- 
stituting Him a free and intelligent spirit ; moral, viz: those constituting 
Him a righteous being ; and consummate being those perfections which 
belong to Him as the concui-rent result of the preceding. The gene- 
ral objection is, that it is too artificial and complicated. It may be 
remarked, further, that the distinction of primary and essential at- 
tributes is unfounded. Common sense would tell us that we cannot 
know God as being, except as we know Him as spiritual being ; and 
dialectics would say that the consideration of the essentia must pre- 
cede that of the esse. Further, the suboi'dinate distribution of attri- 
butes under the several heads is confused. 

Best classification. — The distribution which I would prefer, would 
conform most nearly to that mentioned in the third place, into moral 
and non-moral. All the latter, as duration, ubiquity, knowledge, pow- 
er, &c, will be found to be qualified by the consummate attribute of 
infinitude. All the former, truth, righteousness, goodness, will be 
found converging into the consummate attribute of holiness, the crown- 
ing perfection and glory of the divine nature. 

III. Unity or God. — What we conceived to be the best rational 
proofs of God's unity and simplicity, were presented in a previous lec- 
ture on Natural Theology ; giving the preference to that from the 
convergent harmony of creation. Theologians are also accustomed to 
argue it from the necessity of His existence (inconclusively,) from His 
infinitude (more solidly.) But our best proof is the Word, which as- 
serts His exclusive, as well as His numerical unity. (Deut. vi : 4 ; 1 
Kings viii: 60; Is. xliv : 6; Mark xii: 29, 32; 1 Cor. viii: 4; Eph. 
iv: 6; Gal. iii: 20; 1 Tim. ii: 5; Deut. xxxii : 39; Is. xliii: 10, 11; 
xxxvii : 16 ; xliv : 8, &c. 

He is a Spirit. — The spiritualtiy of God we argued rationally, first 
from the fact that He is an intelligent and voluntary first cause ; for 
our understandings are, properly speaking, unable to attribute these 
qualities to any other than spiritual substance. We found the same 
conclusion flowed necessarily from the fact, that God is the ultimate 
source of all force. It is implied in His immensity and omnipresence. 
He is Spirit, because the fountain of life. This also is confirmed by 
Scriptures emphatically. (See Deut. iv : 15-18; Ps. cxxxix : 7 ; Is. 
xxxi : 3; John iv: 24; 2 Cor. iii: 17.) This eA r idence is greatly 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 91 

strengthened by the fact, that not only is the Father, hut the divine 
nature in Christ, and the Holy Ghost, also, are called again and again 
Spirit. (See for former, Rom. i: 4; Heb. ix : 14.) For latter, the 
title Holy Ghost, Pnettma, everywhere in New Testament, and even in 
Old. We may add, also, all those passages which declare God, al- 
though always most intimately present, to be beyond the cognizance 
of all our senses. (Col. i: 15 ; 1 Tim. i: 17; Heb. xi: 27.) 

His Simplicity. — The simplicity of God, theologically defined, is not 
expressly asserted in the Bible. But it follows as a necessary infer- 
ence, from His spirituality. Our consciousness compels us to conceive 
of our own spirits as absolutely simple ; because the consciousness is 
always such, and the whole conscious subject, ego, is in each conscious 
state indivisibly. The very idea of dividing a thought, an emotion, 
a volition, a sensation, mechanically into parts, is wholly irrelevant to 
our conception of them ; it is impossible. Hence, as God tells us that 
our spirits were formed in the image of His, and as He has employed 
this word, Pnkuma, to express the nature oi His substance, we feel au- 
thorized to conceive of it as also simple. But there are still stronger 
reasons; for a.) Otherwise God's absolute unity would be lost, 
b.) He would not be incapable of change, c.) He might be disinte- 
grated, and so, destroyed. 

We are well aware that many representations occur in Scriptures 
which seem to speak of God as having a material form, e. g., in the 
theophanies and parts, as hands, face, &c, &c. The latter are obvi- 
ously only representations adapted to our faculties, to set before us the 
different modes of God's workings. The seeming forms, angelic or 
human, in which He appeared to the patriarchs, were but the symbols 
of His presence. 

IV. Immensity and Omnipresence. — The distinction between 
God's immensity and omnipresence has already been stated. Both are 
asserted in Scripture. The former in 1 Kings viii : 27, and parallel in 
Chron. ; Is. lxvi: 1. 

The latter in Ps. cxxxix : 7-10; Acts xvii: 27,28; Jer. xxiii: 
24 ; Heb. i : 3. It follows, also, from what is asserted of God's works 
of creation and providence, and of His infinite knowledge. (See Nat. 
Theol. Lect. IH. 

V. Eternity. — God's eternity has been already defined, as an ex- 
istence absolutely without beginning, without end, and without suc- 
cession : and the rational evidences thereof have been presented. As 
to the question, whether God's thoughts and purposes are absolutely 
unconnected with all successive duration, we saw, when treating this 
question in the Natural Theolog Lecture, good reason to doubt. 
The grounds of doubt need not be repeated. But there is a more 
popular sense, in which the punctum stans, may be predicated of the 
divine existence, that past and future are as distinctly and immutably 
present with the Divine Mind, as the present. This is probably indi- 
cated by the striking phrase, Is. lvii : 15, and more certainly, by Exod. 
iii: 14, compared with Jno. viii: 58 ; by Ps. xc : 4, and 2 Peter, iii : 8. 

That God's Being has neither beginning nor end, is stated in re- 
peated places — as Gen. xxi: 33; Ps. xc: 1, 2; cii: 26-28; Is. xli: 4; 
1 Tim. i: 17; Heb. i: 12; Rev. i: 8. 



92 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

VI. Immutability. — That God is immutable in His essence, thoughts, 
volitions, and all His perfections, has been already argued from His 
perfection itself, from His independence and sovereignty, irom His 
simplicity and from His blessedness. This unchangeableness not only 
means that He is devoid of all change, decay, or increase of substance: 
but that His knowledge, His thoughts and plans, and His moral prin- 
ciples and volitions remain forever the same. This immutability of 
His knowledge and thoughts flows from its infinitude. For, being 
complete from eternity, there is nothing new to be added to His know- 
ledge. His nature remaining the same, and the objects present to His 
mind remaining forever unchanged, it is clear that His active princi- 
ples and purposes must remain forever in the same state ; because there 
is nothing new to Him to awaken or provoke new feelings or purposes. 

Our Confession says, that God hath neither parts nor -passions. That 
He has something analogous to what are called in man active princi- 
ples, is manifest, for He wills and acts ; therefore He must feel. But 
these active principles must not be conceived of as emotions, in the 
sense of ebbing and flowing accesses of feeling. In other words, they 
lack that agitation and rush, that change from cold to hot, and hot to 
cold, which constitute the characteristics of passion in us. They are, 
in God, an ineffable, fixed, peaceful, unchangeable calm, although the 
springs of volition. That such principles may be, although incom- 
prehensible to us, we may learn from this fact : That in the wisest and 
most sanctified creatures, the active principles have least of passion 
and agitation, and yet they by no means become inefficacious as 
springs of action — e. g., moral indignation in the holy and wise parent 
or ruler. That the above conception of the calm immutability of 
God's active principles is necessary, appears from the following : The 
agitations of literal passions are incompatible with His blessedness. 
The objects of those feelings are as fully present to the Divine Mind at 
one time as another ; so that there is nothing to cause ebb or flow. 
And that ebb would constitute a change in Him. When, therefore, 
the Scriptures speak of God as becoming wroth, as repenting, as in- 
dulging His fury against His adversaries, in connexion with some par- 
ticular event occurring in time, we must understand them anthropo- 
pathically. What is meant is, that the outward manifestations of His 
active principles were as though these feelings then arose. 

God's immutability, as thus defined, is abundantly asserted in Scrip- 
tures. (Numb, xxiii: 19; Ps. cii: 26; xxxiii : 11; ex: 4; Is. xlvi: 
10; Mai. iii: 6; Jas. i: 17; Heb. vi: 17; xiii: 8.) 

Objections Answered. — This attribute has been supposed to be 
inconsistent with the incarnation of the Godhead in Christ; with 
God's works done in time, and especially His creation ; and with His 
reconciliation with sinners upon their repentance. To the first, it is 
enough to reply, that neither was God's substance changed by the in- 
carnation ; for there was no confusion of natures in the person of 
Christ, nor was His plan modified : for He always intended and fore- 
saw it. To the second, the purpose to create precisely all that is crea- 
ted, was from eternity in God, and to do it just at the time He did. 
Had He not executed that purpose when the set time arrived, there 
would have been the change. To the third, I reply, the change is not 
in God ; but in the sinner. For God to change His treatment as the 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 93 

sinner's character changes, this is precisely what His immutability 
dictates. 



LECTURE XII. 

SYLLABUS. 
DIVINE ATTRIBUTES— (Continued.) 

1. What is the Scriptural account of God's knowledge and wisdom? What the 
meaning of His simple, His free, His mediate knowledge ? Does God's free know- 
ledge extend to the future acts of free agents ? 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, Qu. 12, 13. Dick, Lect. 21,. 22. Watson's Theo. Inst., 
Pt. II, Ch. 4 and Ch. 28, § 3. Dr. Chr. Knapp, § xxii. 

2. Do the Scriptures teach God to be a voluntary being ? What limitation, if 
any, on His will ? Prove that He is omnipotent. Does God govern free-agents 
omnipotently ? 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, Qu. 14, 21, 22. Dick, Lect. 23. Watson, Theo. Inst. 
Pt. II, Ch. 28, § 3, 4. Knapp, § xxi. 

3. What is the distinction between God's decretive and preceptive will ? Is it 
just ? Between His antecedent and consequent will ? Are His volitions ever condi- 
tioned on anything out of Himself ? 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, Qu. 15, 16, 17. Knapp, § xxv and xxvi. 

4. Is God's will the sole source of moral distinctions ? 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, Qu. 18. 

I. God's Knowledge and "Wisdom. — The difference between know- 
ledge and wisdom has been already denned as this : knowledge is the 
simple cognition of things ; wisdom is the selecting and subordinating 
of them to an end, as means. Not only must there be the power of 
selecting and subordinating means to an end, to constitute wisdom ; 
but ( to a worthy end. Wisdom therefore, is a higher attribute than 
knowledge, involving especially the moral perfections. For when one 
proceeds to the selection of an end, there is choice ; and the moral ele- 
ment is introduced. Wisdom and knowledge are the attributes which 
characterize God as pure mind, as a being of infinite and essential 
intelligence. That God's knowledge is vast, we argued from His spir- 
ituality, from His creation of other minds; (Ps. xciv: 7-10,) from His 
work of creation in general, from His omnipresence : (Ps. cxxxix : 
1-12,) and from His other perfections of power, (and especially) of 
goodness, truth, and righteousness, to the exercise of which knowledge 
is constantly essential. Of His wisdom, the great natural proof is 
the wonderful, manifold, and beneficent contrivances in His works of 
creation, (Ps. civ : 24,) and providence. That Paul's knowledge is 
distinct, and in every case intuitive, never deductive, seems to flow 
from its perfection. We only know substances by their attributes ; 
God must know them in their true substance ; because it was His cre- 
ative wisdom which clothed each substance with its essential qualities. 
We only learn many things by inference from other things ; God all 
things intuitively ; because there can be no succession in His know- 
ledge, admitting of the relation of promise and conclusion. 



94 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Omniscience. — We may show the infinite extent of God's know- 
ledge, by viewing it under several distributions. He perfectly knows 
Himself. (1 Cor. ii : 11.) He has all the past perfectly before His 
Mind, so that there is no room for any work of recollection. (Is. xli : 

22 ; xliii: 9.) This is also shown by the doctrine of a universal judg- 
ment. (Eccl. xii : 14 ; Luke viii : 17 ; Rom. ii : 16 ; iii : 6 ; xiv : 10 ; 
Matt, xii: 36; Ps. lvi : 8; Mai. hi: 16; Rev. xx: 12; Jer. xvii : 1.) 

All the acts and thoughts of all His creatures, which occur in the 
present are known to Him as they occur. (Gen. xvi; 13 ; Prov. xv : 
3 ; Ps. cxlvii : 4 ; xxxiv : 15 ; Zech. iv : 10 ; Prov. v ; 21 ; Job xxxiv : 

23 ; Luke xii: 6 ; Heb. iv : 13.) Especially do the Scriptures claim 
for God a full and perfect knowledge of man's thoughts, feelings and 
purposes — however concealed in the soul. (Job xxxiv: 21; Ps. 
cxxxix : 4; Jer. xvii: 10; Jno. ii ; 25; Ps. xliv : 21, &c.) 

God also knows, and has always known, all that shall ever occur in 
the future. (See Is. xlii: 9; Acts xv : 18.) Of this all God's pre- 
dictions likewise, afford clear evidence. The particularity of God's 
foreknowledge even of the most minute things, may be seen, well de- 
fended. Turrettin, Loc. 3, Qu. 12, § 4-6. 

Scientia Simplex. What? — Or, adopting another distribution, 
we may assert that God knows all the possible and all the actual. It 
is His knowledge of the former, which is called by the scholastics 
scientia simpltcis intelligent^. Its object is not that which God has 
determined to effectuate, (the knowledge of which is called "free" or 
scientia visionis ; but that which His. infinite intelligence sees might be 
effectuated, if He saw fit to will it. The scholastics call it His know- 
ledge of that which has essentia, but not esse.) That God has an 
infinite knowledge of possibles, other than those He purposes to actu- 
alize, no one can doubt, who considers the fecundity of this intelli- 
gence, as exhibited in His actual works. Can it be, that those works 
have exhausted all God's conceptions ? Further : God's wise selection 
of means and ends, implies that conceptions existed in the divine 
mind, other than those He has embodied in creation or act, from among 
which He chose. 

Theodicea thence. — The Formalist Divines of the school of Wolff, 
(as represented by Stapfer, Bulfinger, &c.,) make much of this dis- 
tinction between God's knowledge of the possible and the actual, to 
build a defence of God's holiness and benevolence, in the permission 
of evil. Say they ; Scientia simplicis intelligentice, is not free in God. 
He is impelled by a metaphysical necessity, to conceive of the possible 
according to truth. It is God's conception which generates its 
essentia ; but about this, God exercises no voluntary, and therefore, no 
moral act of His nature. God's will is only concerned in bringing 
the thing out of posse into esse. But the esse changes nothing in the 
essentia ; determines nothing about the quality of the thing actualized. 
Therefore God's will is not morally responsible for any evil it produces. 
This pretended argument scarcely needs exposure. It is Realistic in 
its whole structure. The plain answer is, that the thing or event only 
in posse, is non-existent, with all its evils. God's will is certainly con- 
cerned in bringing it out of posse into esse. And unless God is bound 
by fate, His will therein is free. (See my Rev. of Breckinridge.) It 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 95 

is, however, perfectly correct, to say that the object of God's free 
knowledge owes its futurition primarily to His will. Had He not pur- 
posed its production, it would never have been produced ; for He is 
sovereign first cause. Now, if He willed it, of course He fore-knew it. 

God knows all acts of fkee agents with a scientia visionis. — 
This leads us to the oft mooted question ; whether acts contingent, and 
especially those of rational free-agents, are objects of God's bcientia 
visionis, or of a scientia media. This is said to have been first invented 
by the Jesuit Molina, in order to sustain their semi-Pelagian doctrine 
of a self-determining will, and of conditional election. By mediate 
foreknowledge, they mean a kind intermediate between God's know- 
ledge of the possible ; for these acts are possessed of futurition, and 
the scientia visionis : for they suppose the futurition and foreknowledge 
of it is not the result of God^s will, but of the contingent second cause. 
It is called mediate again : because they suppose God arrives at it, not 
directly by knowing His own purpose to affect it : but indirectly ; by 
His infinite insight into the manner in which the contingent second 
cause will act, under given outward circumstances, foreseen or pro- 
duced by God. The existence of such a species of knowledge the 
Calvinists usually deny in toto. To clear the way for this discussion, 
I remark; 

First. That God has a perfect and universal foreknowledge of all 
the volitions of free-agents. The Scriptures expressly assert it. 
(Ezek. xi; 5; Is. xlvii ; 8; Ps, cxxxix ; 3, 4 ; 1 Sam. xxiii : 12; Jno. 
xxi: 18 : 1 Jno. iii : 20 ; Acts xv : 18. It is equally implied in God's 
attribute of heart-searching knowledge, which He claims for Himself. 
(Rev. ii: 23, et passim.) It is altogether necessary to God's know- 
ledge and control of all the future into which any creature's volition 
enters as a part of the immediate or remote causation. And this de- 
partment of the future is so vast, so imjDortant in God's government, 
that if He could not foreknow and control it, He would be one of the 
most baffled, confused, and harassed of all Beings ; and His govern- 
ment one of perpetual uncertainties, failures, and partial expedients. 
Last : God's predictions of such free acts of His creatures, and His 
including them in His decrees, in so many cases, show beyond dispute 
that He has some certain way to foreknow them. See every prophecy 
in Scripture where human or angelic acts enter. Where the prediction 
is positive, and proves true, the foreknowledge must have been cei-- 
tain. For these reasons, the impiety of early Socinians in denying 
God even a universal S'ientia media, is to be utterly repudiated. 

No Scientia Media. Its erroU. — In discussing the question 
whether God's foreknowledge of future acts of free-agents is mediate 
in the -sense defined, I would beg you to note, that the theological 
virus of the proposition, is in this point : That in such cases, the fore- 
knowledge of the act precedes the purpose of God as to it. i. e., They say 
God purposes, because He foresees it, instead of saying with us, that 
He only foresees because He purposes it. Against this point of the 
doctrine, Turrettin's argument is just and conclusive. Of this the 
sum, abating His unnecessary distinctions, is: a.) These acts are 
either possible, or future, so that it is impossible to withdraw them 
from one or the other of the two classes of God's knowledge, His sirn- 



96 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

pie, or His actual, b.) God cannot certainly foreknow an act, unless 
its futurition is certain. If His foreknowing it made it certain, then 
His foreknowledge involves foreordination. If the connexion with 
the second cause producing it made it certain, then it does not belong at 
all to the class of contingent events ! And the causative connexion 
being certain, when God foreordained the existence of the second 
cause, He equally ordained that of the effect. But there are but the 
two sources, from which the certainty of its futurition could have 
come, c.) The doctrine would makes God's knowledge and power 
dependent on contingent acts of His creatures : thus violating God's 
perfections and sovereignty, d.) God's election of men would have 
to be in every case conditioned on His foresight of their conduct, 
(what Semi-Pelagians are seeking here.) But in one case at least, it is 
unconditioned : that of His election of sinners to redemption. (Rom. 
ix : 16, &c.) 

To God nothing is contingent. — But in a metaphysical point of 
view, I cannot but think that Turrettin has made unnecessary and 
erroneous concessions. The future acts of free agents fall under the 
class of contingent effects : i. e., as Turrettin concedes the definition, of 
effects such that the cause being in existence, the effect may, or may 
not follow. (Illustrate.) (He adopts this, to sustain his scholastic 
doctrine of immediate physical concursus : of which more when we 
treat the doctrine of Providence. But let me ask : Has this distinc- 
tion of contingent effects any place at all, in God's mind? Is it not a 
distinction relevant only to our ignorance ? An effect is in some cases, 
to us contingent ; because our partial blindness prevents our foreseeing 
precisely what are the present concurring causes, promoting, or pre- 
venting, or whether the things supposed to be, are real causes, under 
the given circumstances. I assert that wherever the causative tie 
exists at all, its connexion with its effect is certain, (metaphysically 
necessary.) If not, it is no true cause at all. There is, therefore, to 
God, no such thing, in a strictness of speech, as a contingent effect. 
The contingency, (in popular phrase, uncertainly,) pertains not to the 
question whether the adequate cause will act certainly, if present ; but 
whether it is certainly present. To God, therefore, whose knowledge 
is perfect, there is literally no such thing as a contingent effect. And 
this is true concerning the acts of free-agents, emphatically; they are 
effects. Their second cause is the agent's own desires as acting upon 
the objective inducements presented by Providence ; the causative con- 
nexion is certain, in many cases, to our view ; in all cases to God's. 
Is not this the very doctrine of Turrettin himself, concerning the will ? 
The acts of free agents, then, arise through second causes. 

True Distinction of, this Knowledge. — The true statement of 
the matter, then, should be this : The objects of God's scientia vUio'>is, 
or free knowledge, fall into two great classes : a.) Those which God 
effectuates per *e, without any second cause, b.) Those which He 
effectuates through their natural second causes. Of the latter, 
many are physical — e. g., the rearing of vegetables through seeds; 
and to the latter belong all natural volitions of free agents, caused by 
the subjective dispositions of their nature, acting on the objective cir- 
cumstances of their providential position. Now in all effects which 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. $7 

God produces through second causes, His foreknowledge, involving as 
as it does, a fore-ordination, is in a certain sense relative. That is, it 
embraces those second causes, as means, as well as the effects ordained 
through them. (And thus it is that "the liberty or contingency of 
second causes is not taken away, but rather established.") Further, 
the foreknowledge which purposes to produce a certain effect by means 
of a given second cause, must, of course, include a thorough knowledge 
of the nature and power of the cause. That that cause derived that 
nature from another part or act of God's purpose, surely is no obsta- 
cle to this. Here, then, is a proper sense, in which it may be said 
that God's foresight of a given effect is relative — i. e., through His 
knowledge of the nature and power and presence of its natural, or 
second cause. May not relative knowledge be intuitive and positive ? 
Several of our axioms are truths of relation. Yet, it by no means 
follows, therefore, as the Semi-Pelagian would wish, that such a fore- 
knowledge is antecedent to God's preordination concerning it. Be- 
cause God, in foreordaining the presence and action of the natural 
cause, according to His knowledge of its nature, does also efficaciously 
foreordain the effect. 

God's Relative Knowledge. — When, therefore, it is said that 
God's foreknowledge of the volitions of free-agents is relative in this 
sense ; i. e., through His infinite insight into the way their dispositions 
will naturally act under given circumstances, placed around them by 
His intentional providence, the Calvinist should by no means flout it ; 
but accept it, under proper limitations. But the term mediate is not 
accurate, to express this orthodox sense ; because it seems to imply 
derivation subsequent, in the part of God's cognition said to be me- 
diated, from the independent will of the creature. The Calvinist is 
the very man to accept it with consistency. For, on the theory of the 
Semi-Pelagian, such a foreknowledge by insight is impossible ; voli- 
tions being uncaused, according to them ; but on our theory it is per- 
fectly reasonable, volitions, according to us, being certain, or neces- 
sary effects of dispositions. And I repeat, we need not feel any hyper- 
orthodox fear that this view will infringe the perfection of God's 
knowledge, or sovereignty, in His foresight of the free . acts of His 
creatures ; it is the very way to establish them, and yet leave the 
creature responsible. For if God is able to foresee that the causative 
connexion, between the second cause and its effect, is certain ; then in 
decreeing the presence of the cause and the proper external conditions 
of its action, He al-o decrees the occurrence of the effect. And, that 
volitions are not contingent, but certain effects, is the very thing the 
Calvinist must contend for, if he would be consistent. The history 
of this controversy on scientia media presents another instance of the 
rule ; that usually mischievous errors have in them a certain modicum 
of valuable truth. Without this, they would not have strength in 
them to run, and do mischief. 

II. God's will and power omnipotent over free agents also. 
We should apprehend no real distinction between God's will and His 
power ; because in our spirits, to will is identical with the putting 
forth of power ; and because Scripture represents all God's working 
as being done by a simple volition. Ps. xxxiii : 9 ; xxxiii : 6 ; Gen. i : 



98 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

3. That God is a free and voluntary being, we inferred plainly from 
the selection of contrivances to produce His ends, and of ends to be 
produced ; for these selections are acts of choice. He is Universal 
Cause, and Spirit. What is volition but a spirit's causation ? Of His 
vast power, the works of creation and providence are sufficient, stand- 
ing proofs. And the successive displays brought to our knowledge 
have been so numerous and vast, that there seems to reason herself 
every pi'obability His power is infinite. There must be an inexhaust- 
ible reserve, where so much is continually put forth. Finally, were 
He not omnipotent, He would not be very God. The being, whoever 
it is, which defies His power would be His rival. The Scriptures also 
repeatedly assert His omnipotence. See Gen. xvii : 1 ; Rev. i : 8 ; Jer. 
xxxii: 17; Matt, xix: 26; Luke i: 37; Rev. xix : 6 ; Matt, vi : 13. 
They say with equal emphasis, that God exercises full sovereignty 
over free agents, securing the performance by them, and upon them, 
of all that He pleases, yet consistently with their freedom and respon- 
sibility. Dan. iv : 35 ; Prov. xxi : 1 ; Ps. lxxvi : 10 ; Phil, ii : 13 ; Rom. 
ix: 19 ; Eph. i : 11, &c. The same truth is evinced by every predic- 
tion in which God has positively foretold what free agents should do ; 
for had He not some way of securing the result, He would not have 
predicted it positively. Here may be cited the histories of Pharaoh. 
Exod. iv : 21; vi: 1 ; of Joseph, Gen. xlv : 5 ; of the Assyrian king, 
Is. x : 5-7 ; of Cyrus, Is. xlv : 1 ; of Judas, Acts ii : 23, &c, &c. It is 
objected by those of Pelagian tendencies, that some such instances of 
control do not prove that God has universal sovereignty over all free 
agents ; for they may be lucky instances, in which God managed to 
cause them to carry out His will by some expedient. To say nothing 
of the texts quoted above, it may be answered, that these cases, with 
others that might be quoted, are too numerous, too remote, and too 
strong, to be thus accounted for. Further : if God could control one, 
He can another; there being no different powers to overcome; and 
there will hardly be a prouder or more stubborn case than that of 
Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzor. A parallel answer may be made to the 
evasion from the argument for God's foreknowledge of man's volitions, 
from His predictions of them. Once more : if God is not sovereign 
over free-agents, He is of course not sovereign over any events de- 
pendent on the volitions of free agents, either simultaneous or previ- 
ous. But those events make up a vast multitude, and include all the 
affairs of God's Government which most interest us and concern His 
providence. If He has not this power, He is, indeed, a poor depend- 
ence for the Christian, and prayer for His protection is little worth. 
The familiar objection will, of course, be suggested, that if God gov- 
erns men sovereignly, then they are not free agents. The discussion 
of it will be postponed till we treat of Providence. Enough mean- 
time, to say, that we have indubitable evidence of both ; of the one 
from consciousness, of the other from Scripture and reason. Yet, that 
these agents were responsible and guilty, see Is. x: 12; Acts i: 25. 
Their reconciliation may transcend, but does not violate reason — wit- 
ness the fact that man may often influence his fellow-man so decisively 
as to be able to count on it, and yet, that act be free, and responsible. 
Omnipotence does not do self-contradictions. — We have seen 
(Natural Theology) that God's omnipotence is not to be understood, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 99 

notwithstanding the emphatic assertions of Scripture, that all things 
are possible with Him, as a power to do contradictions. It has also 
been usually said by Theologians that God's will is limited, not only 
by the necessary contradiction, but by His own perfections. The 
meaning is correct ; the phrase is incorrect. God's will is not limited ; 
for those perfections as much ensure that He will never wish, as that 
He will never do, those incompatible things. He does absolutely all 
that He wills. But thus explained, the qualification is fully sustained 
by Scripture. 2 Tim. ii: 13 ; Tit. i : 2 ; Beb. vi : 18 ; Jas. i : 13. 

III. Secret and revealed will distinguished. — I have argued 
that God's will is absolutely executed over all free-agents ; and yet 
Scripture is full of declarations that sinful men and devils disobey His 
will ! There must be, therefore, a distinction between His secret, and 
revealed, His decretive, and preceptive will. All God's will must be, 
in reality, a single, eternal, immutable act. The distinction, there- 
fore, is one necessitated by our limitation of understanding, and re- 
lates only to the manifestation of the parts of this will to the creature. 
By God's decretive will, we mean that part of His will by which He 
foreordains whatever eonies to pass. By His perceptive, that by which 
he enjoins on creatures what is right and proper for them to do. The 
dcretive we also call His secret will ; because it is for the most 
part (except as disclosed in some predictions and the effectuation) re- 
tained in His own breast. His perceptive we call His revealed will, 
because it is published to man for his guidance. Although this dis- 
tinction is beset with plausible quibbles, yot every man is impelled to 
make it; for otherwise either alternative is odious and absurd. Say 
that God has no secret decretive will, and He wishes just what He 
commands and nothing more, and we represent Him as a Being whose 
desires are perpetually crossed and baffled ; yea, trampled on ; the 
most harrassed, embarrassed, and impotent Being in the universe. 
Deny the other part of our distinction, and you regresent God as ac- 
quiescing in all the iniquities done on earth and in hell. Again, 
Scripture clearly establishes the distinction. Witness all the texts 
already quoted to show that God's sovereignty overrules all the acts 
of men to His purposes. Add Bom. xi : 33, to end ; Prov. xvi : 4. 
See also Deut. xxix: 29. Special cases are also presented, (the most 
emphatic possible.) in which God's decretive will differed from His 
preceptive will, as to the same individuals. See Exod. iv : 21-23 ; 
Ezek. iii; 7, with xviii : 31. 

Objections. — The objections are, that this distinction represents 
God as either insincere in His precepts to His creatures, or else, as 
having His own volitions at war among themselves ; and that, by mak- 
ing His secret will decretive of sinful acts as well as holy, we represent 
Him as unholy. The seeming inconsistency is removed by these con- 
siderations. " God's perceptive will." In this phrase, the word will 
is used in a different sense. For, in fact, while God wills the utter- 
ance of the precepts, the acts enjoined are not objects of God's volition, 
save in the cases where they are actually embraced in His decretive 
will. All the purposes which God carries out by permitting and over- 
ruling the evil acts of His creatures, are infinitely holy and proper for 
Him to carry out. It may be ri&ht for Him to permit what it would 



\ 

100 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

be wrong for us to do, and therefore wrong for Him to command us to 
do. Not only is it righteous and proper for an infinite Sovereign to 
withhold from His creatures, in their folly, a part of His infinite and 
wise designs ; but it is absolutely unavoidable ; for their minds being 
finite, it is impossible to make them comprehend God's infinite plan. 
Seeing, then, that He could not give them His whole immense design 
as the rule of their conduct, what rule was it most worthy of His 
goodness and holiness to reveal 1 ? Evidently, the moral law, requiring 
of them what is righteous and good for them. There is no insincerity 
in God's giving this law, although He may, in a part of the cases, se- 
cretly determine not to give unmerited grace to constrain men to keep 
it. Remember, also, that if even in these cases men would keep it, 
God would not fail to reward them according to His promise. But 
God, foreknowing that they would freely choose not to keep it, for wise 
reasons determines to leave them to their perverse choice, and overrule 
it to His holy designs. I freely admit that the divine nature is in- 
scrutable ; and that mystery must always attach to the divine purposes. 
But there is a just sense in which a wise and righteous man might say, 
that he sincerely wished a given subject of iiis would would not trans- 
gress, and yet that, foreseeing his pervei'sity, he fully purposed to 
permit it, and carry out his purposes thereby. Shall not the same 
thing be possible for God in a higher sense? 

Antecedent and Consequent Will. — There is a sense in which 
some parts of God's will may be said to be antecedent to, and some 
parts consequent to His foresight of man's acts — i. e., as our finite 
minds are compelled to conceive them. Thus: although God's will 
acts by one, eternal, comprehensive, simultaneous act, we cannot con- 
ceive of His determination to permit man's fall, except as a conse- 
quence of His prior purpose to create man ; (because if none were 
created, there would be none to fall ;) and of His decree to give a Re- 
deemer, as consequent on His foresight of the fall. But the Arminian 
Scholastics have perverted this simple distinction thus, making the 
antecedent act of God's will precede the view had by God of the 
creature's action ; and the consequent, following upon, and produced by 
that foresight; e. g., the purpose to create man was antecedent, to 
punish his sin consequent. I object, that this notion really violates 
the unity and eternity of God's volition. 2d. It derogates from the 
independence of Gods wilt, making it determined by, instead of de- 
termining, the creature's conduct. 3d. It overlooks the fact that all 
the parts of the chain, the means as well as the end, the second causes 
as well as consequences, are equally and as early determined by, and 
embraced in, God's comprehensive plan. As to a sequence and depen- 
dency between the parts of God's decree, the truth, so far as man's 
mind is capable of comprehending, seems to be this: That the decree 
is in fact one, in God's mind, and has no succession ; but we being in- 
capable of apprehending it save by parts, are compelled to conceive 
God, as having regard in one part of His eternal plan to a state of 
facts destined by Him to proceed out of another part of it. This re- 
mark will have no little importance when we come to view supralapsa- 
rianism. 

God's will absolute. — God's purposes are all independent of any 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. no 

condition extereal to Himself in this sense ; that they are not caused 
hy anything ab extra. The things decreed may be conditioned on other 
parts of His own purpose, in that they embrace means necessary to 
ends. While the purposes have no cause outside of God, they doubtless 
all have wise and sufficient reasons, known to God. 

•IV. Moral distinctions eternal. — I believe that the moral law is 
not right merely because it is commanded, but is commanded because 
it is right. Because : a.) God's will acts under the prompting of His 
own perfections — i. e., His moral volitions are not uncaused. His per- 
fections, therefore, must have a rectitude antecedent, (in the order of 
production,) to his volitions, b.) Otherwise, it would be entirely con- 
ceivable that God might have made it right to do all vile things, and even 
to deny His Godhead ! c.) No argument could be founded for the 
necessity of atonement ; because God's purpose of mercy would have 
constituted the act of mercy an act of justice, without satisfaction to 
justice, d.) There would be no distinction at all between moral and 
positive precepts; whereas we know that there is a reason to be found 
why it is morally right to obey God's positive precepts, in the relations 
of Creator, Benefactor, and Kedeemer, which He bears to us. e.) God's 
sovereignty would not be moral. 

Yet our doctrine does not represent God as under external moral 
authority • because the ground of the rectitude of His volitions exists, 
for Him, nowhere but in His own perfections. 



LECTURE XIII. 



SYLLABUS. 
GOD'S MORAL ATTRIBUTES. 

1. Define and prove from Scripture God's ab olute and relative, His distribu- 
tive, and punitive justice. 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, que. 19. Dick, Lect. 25. Ridgeley, B< dy of Divinity, 
que. vii, p. 164. \\ r atson's Theol. Institutes, pt. ii, ch. vii, §, (1,) Chr. 
Knapp, § xxx, xxxi. 

2. What is God's goodness? What the relation of it to His love, His grace, 
and His mercy? What Scriptural proof that He possesses these attributes f 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, que. 20. Dick, Lect. 24. Ridgeley, que. vii, p. 168, 
&c. Charnock, Disc, xii, § 2-3, (pp. 255 to 287.) Watson's Theol. Inst., 
pt. ii, ch. 6. Kna&pp, § xxviii, 2. 

3. Difiae and prove God's truth and faithfulness, and defend from objections. 
Dick, Lect. 26. Ridgeley, que. vii, p. 186, &c. Watson's Theol. Inst., pt. 
ii, ch, vii, (ii.) 



102 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

4. What is the holiness of God? Prove it. 

Dick, Lect. 27. Charnock, Disc.xi, § i, (pp. 135-144.) Ridgcley, que. 
vii, p. 160, &c. 

5. Prove God's infinitude. 
Turrettin, Loc. iii, que. 8. 

Moral attributes God's chief glory.— We have now reached that 
which is the most glorious, and at the same time, the most important 
class of God's attributes; those which qualify Him as an infinitely per- 
fect moral Being. These are the attributes which regulate His will 
and are, therefore, so to speak, His practical perfections. Without, 
these, His infinite presence, power, and wisdom would be rather 
objects of terror and fear, than of love and trust. Indeed, it is im- 
possible ts conceive how the horrur of a rational being could be more 
thoroughly awakened, than by the idea of wicked omnipotence wielding 
all possible powers for the ruin or promotion of our dearest interests, 
yet uncontrolled alike by created power, and by moral restraints. The 
forlorn despair of the wretch who is left alone in the solitude of the 
ocean, to buffet its innumerable waves, would be a faint shadow of that 
which would settle over a universe in the hands of such a God. But 
blessed be His name, He is declared, by His works and word, to be a 
God of complete moral perfections. Aud this is the ground on which 
the Scriptures base their most frequent and strongest claims to the praise 
and love of His creatures. His power, His knowledge, His wisdom, His 
immutability are glorious; but the glory and lovliness of His moral 
attributes excelleth. 

Enumeration. — God's distinct moral attributes may be counted as 
three — His justice, His goodness, and His truth — these three concurring 
in His consummate moral attribute, holiness. 

I. Justice defined. — God's absolute justice is technically defined by 
theologians as the general rectitude of character, intrinsic in His own 
will. His relative justice is the acting out of that rectitude towards 
His creatures. His distributive justice is the quality more precisely in- 
dicated when we call Him a just God, which prompts Him to give to 
every one his due. His punitive justice is that phase of His distributive 
justice which prompts Him always to allot its due punishment to sin. 
No Christian theologian denies to God the quality of absolute justice, 
nor of relative, as far as His general dealings with His creatures go. 
We have seen that even reason infers it clearly from the authority of 
conscience in man ; from the instinctive pleasure accompanying well-do- 
ing, and pain attached to ill-doing; from the general tendency which 
God's providence has established by which virtue usually promotes in- 
vidual and social well-being, and vice destroys them ; and from many 
providential retributions where crimes are made to become their own 
avengers. And Scripture declares His rectitude in too many places and 
forms, to be disputed, e. g., Ps. lxlii : 15 ; Ezra ix : 15 ; Ps. xix : 9 ; 
cxlv : 16 ; Rev. xvi : 7, &c, &c, Ps. lxxxix • 14 ; Hab. i : 13. 

Is God's punitive justice essential? — Different theories. — It is 
upon the punitive justice of God that the difference arises. As the es- 
tablishing of this will establish a fortiori, the general righteousness of 
God's dealings, we shall continue the discussion on this point. The 
Socinians deny that retributive justice is an essential or an immutable 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 103 

attribute of God. They do not, indeed, deny that God punishes sin ; 
nor that it would be right for Him to do so in all eases, if He willed it ; 
but they deny that there is anything in His perfections to ensure His 
always willing it, as to every sin. Instead of believing that God's 
righteous character impels Him unchangeably to show His displeasure 
against sin in this way, they hold that, in those a cases where He wills 
to punish it, He does it merely for the sinner's reformation, or the good 
of His government. The New England divines also hold that while 
God's purpose to punish sin is uniform and unchangeable, it is only 
that this form of prevention against the mischiefs of sin may be dili- 
gently employed, for the good of the universe. They hold that His 
law is not the expression of His essence, but the invention of His wis- 
dom. Both these opinions have this in common ; that they resolve 
God's justice into benevolence, or utility. The principle will be more 
thoroughly discussed by me in the Senior Course, in connexion with 
the Atonement. I only remark here, that such an account of the divine 
attribute of justice is attended by all the absurdities which lie against 
the Utilitarian System of morals among men ; and by others. It is 
opposed to God's independence, making the creature His end, instead 
of Himself, and the carrying out of His own perfections. It violates 
our conscience, which teaches us that to inflict judicial suffering on one 
innocent for the sake of utility, would be heinous wrong, and that there 
is in all sin an inherent desert of punishment for its own sake. It re- 
solves righteousness into mere prudence, and right into advantage. 

Affirmative view. — Now Calvinists hold that God is immutably 
determined by His own eternal and essential justice, to visit every sin 
with punishment according to its desert. Not indeed that He is con- 
strained, or His free-agency is bound herein; for He is immutably im- 
pelled by nothing but His own perfection. Nor do they suppose that 
this unchangeableness is a blind physical necessity, operating under all 
circumstances, like gravitation, with a mechanical regularity. It is the 
perfectly regular operation of a rational perfection, co-existing with 
His other attributes of mercy, wisdom, &c, and therefore modifying 
itself according to its object; as much approving, yea, demanding, the 
pardon of the penitent and believing sinner, for whose sins penal satis- 
faction is made and applied, as before, it demanded his punishment. 
In this sense, then: that God's retributive justice is not a mere expe- 
dient of benevolent utility, but a distinct essential attribute, I argue, 
by the following scriptural proofs : 

Proved by Scripture. — a.) Those Scriptures where God is declared 
to be a just and inflexible judge. Exod. xxxiv : 7 ; Ps. v : 5 ; Gen. xviii : 
25 ; Ps. lxliv : 2 ; 1 : 6 ; Is. 11: 3-4. 

b.) Those Scriptures where God is declared to hate sin. e. g., Ps. 
vii : 11 ; Ps. v : 4-6 ; xlv : 7 ; Deut. iv : 24 ; Prov. xi : 20 ; Ps. xiv : 1 ; 
Jer. xliv ; 4 ; Is. lxi : 8. If the Socinian, or the New England view 
were correct, God could not be said to hate sin, but only the conse- 
quences of it. And our own consciences tell us that a moral indiffer- 
ence tothe intrinsic character of a bad act would of itself stamp a Be- 
ing as immoral. 

Br the Law. — c.) From God's moral law, which is the transcript of 
His own essential perfections. Of this law, the penal sanction is always 
an essential part. See Rom. x: 5; Gal. iii : 12 ; Bom. v. 12, 



104 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

The ceremonial law equally proves it: for the great object of all the 
bloody sacrifices was to hold forth the great theological truth that there 
is no pardon of the sinner, without the punishment of the sin in a sub- 
stitute. Heb. ix: 22. 

By Christ's Death. — d.) The death of Christ, a sinless being who 
had no guilt of His own for which to atone. We are told that " our 
sins were laid upon" Christ; that "He was made sin," that " He suf- 
fered the just for the unjust ;" "that God might be just, and yet the 
justifyer of the ungodly;" that "the chastisement of our peace was 
upon Him," &c. Is. liii : 5 to 11 ; Rom. iii : 24-26; Gal. iii : 13, 14; 
1 Pet. iii; 18, &c. Now, if Christ only suffered to make a governmental 
display of the mischievous consequences of sin, then sin itself was not 
punished in Him, and all the sins of the pardoned remain forever un- 
punished, in express contradiction to these Scriptures. Moreover, the 
transaction of Calvary, instead of being a sublime exhibition of God's 
righteousness, was only an immoral farce. And last: not only is God 
not immutably just, but He is capable of being positively unjust: in 
that the only innocent man since Adam was made to suffer most of all 
men ! 

Objection, that magistrates pardon. Answer. — The particular 
phase of the argument from God's rectoral justice, or moral relations 
to the rational universe as its Ruler, will be considered more appro- 
priately when we come to the doctrine of atonement; as also, Socinian 
objections. One of these, however, has been raised, and is so obvious, 
that it must be briefly noted here. It is, that the righteousness of 
magistrates, parents, masters, and teachers, is not incompatible with 
gome relaxations of punitive justice ; why then should that of our Heav- 
enly Father be so, who is infinitely benevolent ; who is the God of love ? 
The answer is: that God's government differs from theirs in three par- 
ticulars. They are not the appointed, supreme retributors of crime, 
(Rom. xii : 19), and their punishments, while founded on retributive 
justice, are not chiefly guided by this motive, but by the policy of re- 
pressing sin, and promoting order. Second ; they are not immutable, 
either in fact or profession ; so that when they change their threats 
into pardons without satisfaction to the threatening, their natures are 
not necessarily dishonored. Third : they are not omniscient, to know 
all the motives of the offender, and all the evidences of guilt in doubt- 
ful cases, so as to be able exactly to graduate the degree and certainty 
of guilt. These three differences being allowed for, it would be as im- 
proper for man to pardon without satisfaction, as God. 

II. God's Benevolence, &c. — God's goodness is, to creatures, one 
of His loveliest attributes ; because it is from this that all the happi- 
ness which all enjoy flows, as water from a spring. Goodness is the 
generic attribute of which the love of benevolence, grace, pity, mercy, 
forgiveness, are but specific actings, distinguished by the attitude of 
their objects, rather than by the intrinsic principle. Goodness is God's 
infinite will to dispense well-being, in accordance with His other attri- 
butes of wisdom, righteousness, &c, and on all orders of His creatures, 
according to their natures and rights. , Love is God's active (but pas- 
sionless) affection, by which He delights in His creatures, and in their 
well-being, and delights consequently in conferring it. It is usually 
distinguished into love of complacency, and love of benevolence. The 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 105 

former is a moral emotion, (though in God passionless), being His holy 
delight in holy qualities in His creatures, co-operating with His simple 
goodness to them as creatures. The latter is but His goodness mani- 
festing itself, actively. Grace is the exercise of goodness where it is 
undeserved, as in bestowing assured eternal blessedness on the elect 
angels; and redemption on hell-deserving man. And because all spir- 
itual and holy qualities in saints are bestowed by God, without desert 
on their part, they are called also, their graces, charismata. Pity, or sim- 
ple compassion, is goodness going forth towards a suffering object, and 
prompting, of course, to the removal of suffering. Mercy is pity towards 
one suffering for guilt. But as all the suffering of God's rational crea- 
tures is for guilt, His compassion to them is always mercy. All mercy 
is also grace ; but all grace is not mercy. 

Are all the moral attributes only phases of Goodness? — Many 
theologians (of the Socinian, New England and Universalist schools) 
overstrain God's goodness, by representing it as His one, universally 
prevalent moral attribute ; in such sense that His justice is but a puni- 
tive policy dictated by goodness, His truth but a politic dictate of His 
benevolence, &c. Their chief reliance for support of this view is on 
the supposed contrariety of goodness and retributive justice ; and on 
such passages as, " God is love," &c. To the last, the answer is plain : 
if an exclusive sense must be forced on such a text, as makes it mean 
that God has no quality but benevolence, then, when Paul and Moses 
say, " Our God is a consuming fire," we should be taught that He has 
no quality but justice ; and when another says, " God is light," that 
He is nothing but simple intelligence, without will or character. The 
interpretation of all must be consistent inter se. The supposed incom- 
patibility of goodness and justice we utterly deny. They are two 
phases, or aspects of the same perfect character. God is not good to a 
certain extent, and then just, for the rest of the way, as it were by 
patches ; but infinitely good and just at once, in all His character, and 
in all His dealings. He would not be truly good, if He were not just. 
The evidence is this very connexion between holiness and happiness, 
so intimate as to give pretext for the confusion of virtue and benevo- 
lence among moralists. God's wise goodne-s, so ineffably harmonized 
by His own wisdom and holiness, would of itself prompt Him to be 
divinely just ; and His justice, while it does not necessitate, approves 
His divine goodness. 

Scriptural proofs of God's Goodness. — The rational proofs of 
God's goodness have been already presented, drawn from the structure 
of man's sensitive, social, and moral nature, and from the adaptations 
of the material world thereto. (See Natural Theology. Lecture 4.) 
To this I might add, that the very act of constructing suah a creation, 
where sentient beings are provided, in their several orders, with their 
respective natural good, bespeaks God a benevolent Being. For, being 
sufficient unto Himself, it must have been His desire to communicate 
His own blessedness, which prompted Him to create these recipients of 
it. Does any one object, that we say He made all for His own glory ; 
and therefore, His motive was selfish, and not benevolent? I rejoin: 
What must be the attributes of that Being, who thus considers His own 
glory as most appropriately illustrated in bestowing enjoyment 1 The 



106 SYLLABUS AtfD NOTES 

fact that God makes beneficence Sis glory, proves Him, in the most in- 
trinsic and noble sense, benevolent. 

When we approach Scripture, we find goodness, in all its several 
phases, profusely asserted of God. Ps. cxlv : 8, 9 ; 1 J no. iv : 8 ; Exo. 
xxxiv : 6 ; Ps. xxxiii : 5 ; lii : 1 ; ciii : 8 ; xiii : 17 ; Ps. cxxxvi ; Jas. v : 
11; 2 Pet. iii: 15, &c. 

Crowning proof for Redemption. — But the crowning proof which 
the Scriptures present of God's goodness, is the redemption of sinners. 
Rom. v : 8 ; Jno. iii : 16 ; 1 Jno. iii : 1 ; iv : 10. The enhancement of 
this amazing display are, first : that man's misery was so entirely self- 
procured, and the sin which procures it so unspeakably abominable to 
God's infinite holiness ; second : that the misery from which He delivers 
is so immense and terrible, while the blessedness He confers is so com- 
plete, exalted and everlasting ; third : that ruined man was to Him so 
entirely unimportant and unnecessary, and moreover so trivial and lit- 
tle, when compared with God ; fourth : that our continued attitude 
towards Him throughout all this plan of mercy is one of aggravating 
unthankfulness, enmity, and rebellion ; fifth : that God should have 
given such a price for such a wretched and hateful object, as the humilia- 
tion of His own Son, and the condescending work of the Holy Ghost ; 
and last : that He should have exerted the highest wisdom known to 
man in any of the divine counsels, and the noblest energies of divine 
power, to reconcile His truth and justice with His goodness in man's 
redemption. Each of these features has been justly made the subject 
of eloquent illustration. In this argument is the inexhaustible fund of 
proof for God's goodness. The work of redemption reveals a love, com- 
passion, condescension, so strong, that nothing short of eternity will 
suffice to comprehend it. 

The great standing difficulty concerning the divine goodness has been 
already briefly considered, in Lect. 4, § 4. 

III. God's truth, and Faithfulness. — God's Truth may be said 
to be an attribute which characterizes all God's other moral attributes, 
and His intellectual. The word truth is so simple as to be, perhaps, 
undefinable. It may be said to be that which is agreeable to reality of 
things. God's knowledge is perfectly true ; being exactly correspond- 
ent with the reality of the objects thereof. His wisdom is true ; being 
unbiassed by error of knowledge, prejudice, or passion. His justice is 
true ; judging and acting always according to the real state of character 
and facts. His goodness is true ; being perfectly sincere, and its out- 
goings exactly according to His own perfect knowledge of the real state 
of its objects, and His justice. But in a more special sense, God's 
truth is the attribute which characterizes all His communications to 
His creatures. When those communications are promissory, or mina- 
tory, it is called His faithfulness. This attribute has been manifested 
through two ways, to man, the testimony of our senses and intelligent 
faculties, and the testimony of Revelation. If our confidence in God's 
truth were undermined, the effect would be universally ruinous. Not 
only would Scripture with all its doctrines, promises, threatenings, pre- 
cepts, and predictions, become worthless, but the basis of all confidence 
in our own faculties would be undermined; and universal skepticism 
would arrest all action. Man could neither believe his fellow-man, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 107 

nor his own experience, nor senses, nor reason, nor conscience, nor con- 
sciousness, if he could not believe his God. 

Evidences of it, from Reason. — The evidences of God's truth and 
faithfulness are two-fold. We find that He deals truly in the informa- 
tions which He has ordained our own senses and faculties to give us, 
whenever they are legitimately used. The grounds upon which we be- 
lieve them have been briefly reviewed in my remarks upon metaphysical 
skepticism. God has so formed our minds that we cannot but take for 
granted the legitimate informations of our senses, consciousness, and 
intuitions. But this unavoidable trust is abundantly confirmed by 
subsequent experiences. The testimonies of one sense, for instance, 
are always confirmed by those of the others, when they are applied ; 
e. g., when the eyes tells us a given object is present, the touch, if ap- 
plied, confirms it. The expectations raised by our intuitive reason, as 
e. g., that like causes will produce like effects, are always verified by 
the occurrence of the expected phenomena. Thus a continual process 
is going on, like the " proving " of a result in arithmatic. Either the 
seemingly true informations of our senses are really true, or the har- 
monious coherency of the set of errors which they assert is perfectly 
miraculous. 

From Scripture. — The second class of proofs is that of Scripture. 
Truth and faithfulness are often predicated of God in the most unqual- 
ified terms. 2 Cor. i : 18 ; Rev. iii : 7 ; vi : 10 ; xv : 3 : xvi : 7 ; Deut. 
vii: 9; Heb. x: 23. 

All the statements and doctrines of Scripture, so far as they come 
within the scope of man's consciousness and intuitions, are seen to be 
infallibly true ; as, for instance, that "the carnal mind is enmity against 
God ;" that we " go astray as soon as we be born, speaking lies," &c, &c. 
Again, Scripture presents us with a multitude of specific evidences of 
His truth and faithfulness, in the promises, threatenings, and predic- 
tions, which are contained there ; for all have been fulfilled, so far as 
ripened. 

The supposed exceptions, where threats have been left unfulfilled, 
as that of Jonah against Ninevah, are of very easy solution. A condi- 
tion was always either implied or expressed, on which the execution of 
the threat was suspended. 

The apparent insincerity of God's offers of mercy, and commands of 
obedience and penitence, held forth to those to whom He secretly intended 
to give no grace to comply, offers a more plausible objection. But it 
has been virtually exploded by what was said upon the secret and de- 
cretive, as distinguished from the revealed and preceptive will of God. 
I shall return to it again more particularly when I come to treat of 
effectual calling. 

IV. God's Holiness. — When places, Mount Zion, utensils, oils, 
meats, altars, days, &c, are called holy, the obvious meaning is, that 
they are consecrated — i. e., set apart to the religious service of God. 
This idea is also prominent, when God's priests^prophets/.and professed 
people, are called holy. But when applied to God, the word is most 
evidently not used in a ceremonial, but in a spiritual sense. Most fre- 
quently it seems to express the general idea of His moral purity, as 
Levit. xi: 44: Ps. cxlv : 17: 1 Pet. i: 15, 16 ; sometimes it seems to 



10§. SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 

express rather the idea of His majesty, not exclusive of His moral 
perfections, but inclusive also of His power, knowledge and wisdom, 
as in Ps. xxii: 3; xcviii : 1; Is. vi : 3; Rev. iv : 8. Holiness, there- 
fore, is to be regarded, not as a distinct attribute, but as the resultant 
of all God's moral attributes together. And as His justice, goodness, 
and truth are all predicated of Him as a Being of intellect and will, 
and would be wholly irrelevant to anything unintelligent and involun- 
tary, so His holiness implies a reference to the same attributes. His 
moral attributes are the special crown • His intelligence and will are the 
brow that wear it. His holiness is the collective and consummate glory 
His nature as an infinite, morally pure, active, and intelligent Spirit. 

V. God's Infinity. — We have now gone around the august circle of 
the Divine attributes, so far as they are known to us. In another sense 
I may say that the summation of them leads us to (rod's other consum- 
mate attribute — His infinitude. This is an idea which can only be 
defined negatively. We mean by it that God's being and attributes 
are wholly without bounds. Some divines, indeed, of modern schools, 
would deny that we mean anything by the term, asserting that infini- 
tude is an idea which the human mind cannot have at all. They em- 
ploy Sir W. Hamilton's well known argument, that " the finite mind 
cannot think the unconditioned ; because to think it is to limit it." It 
has always seemed to me that the plain truth on this subject is, that 
man's mind does apprehend the idea of infinitude, (else whence the 
word?) but that it cannot comprehend it. It knows that there is the 
infinite; it cannot fully know what it is. God's nature is absolutely 
without bound, as to His substance, (immense,) as to His duration, 
(eternal,) as to His knowledge, (omniscience,) as to His will, (omnipo- 
tence), as to His moral perfections, (holiness.) It is an infinite essence. 

Supremacy. — One of the consequences which flows from these per- 
fections of God is His absolute sovereignty, which is so often asserted 
of Him in Scripture; e. g., Dan. iv : 35; Rev. xix: 16: Rom. ix : 
15-23; 1 Tim. vi : 15; Bev. iv: 11. By this we do not mean a power 
to do everything, as, e. g., to punish an innocent creature, contradictory 
to God's own perfections ; but a righteous title to do everything, and 
control every creature, unconstrained by anything outside His own will, 
but always in harmony with His own voluntary perfections. When we 
call it a righteous title, we mean that it is not only a dunamis, but 
an exousia, not only a physical potentia, but a moral potestas. The 
foundations of this righteous authority are, first, God's infinite perfec- 
tions ; second, His creation of all His creatures out of nothing ; and 
third, His preservation and blessing of them. This sovereignty, of 
course, carries with it the correlative duty of implicit obedience on 
our part. 

But second : Another consequence which flows from the infinite per- 
fections of God is that He is entitled not only to dispose of us and our 
services, for His own glory, but to receive our supreme, sincere affec- 
tions. Just in degree as the hearts of His intelligent creatures are 
right, will they admire, revere, and love God, above all creatures, 
singly or collectively. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 109 

LECTUKE XIV. 



SYLLABUS. 
THE TRINITY. 

1. Explain the origin and meaning of the terms, Trinity, Essence, SuJjstance, 
Subsistance, Person, homoousion. 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, que. 23. Hill's Divin., Bk. iii, ch. x, § 2, 3. Knapp, 
Section xlii, § iii, Lect. xliii, § ii. Dick, Lect. 28. 

2. (live the history of opinions touching the Trinity ; and especially the Pa- 
trip assian, Sabellian, and Arian 

Knapp, Sections xlii and xliii. Hill, Bk. iii, ch. x. Dick, Lect. 29. 
Hagenback, Hist, of Doc. Mosheim, Com. de Reb., ante Constantinum, 
vol. i, § 68, vol. ii, § 32 and 33. 

3. Define the doctrine of the Trinity, as held by the orthodox : and state the 
propositions included in it. 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, que. 25, § 1-3, and que. 27. Hill and Diek, as above. 
Jno, Howe, " Calm and Sober Inquii y Concerning Possibility of a Trinity." 

4. "What rationalistic explanations of the doctrine were attempted by the 
Origenists ; and what - by the mediaeval scholastics ? Are they of any value ? 

Th. Aquinas, Summa. Hill, as above. Neander, Ch. Hist. , 2 Am. Edit., 
Boston, vol. ii, p. 360, &c, vol. iv, 457, &c. Moshiem, Com., vol. ii, § 27 
and 31. Knapp, Section xlii. Watson, Theol, Inst., pt. ii, ch. 8, i (i.) 2. 

5. Present the general Bible evidence for a Trinity, from the Old Testament 
and from the New. 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, que. 25 and 26. Dick, Lect. 28. Knapp, Sect, xxxiv, 

XXXV. 

§ I. Nomenclature. — While a part of the terms introduced by 
the Scholastics to define this doctrine are useful, others of them illus- 
trate in a striking manner the disposition to substitute words for ideas, 
and to cheat themselves into the belief that they had extended the lat- 
ter, by inventing the former. The Greek Fathers, like the theologians 
of our own country, usually make no distinction between essence, and 
substance, representing both by the word ousia, being. But the 
Latin Scholastics make a distinction between essentia, esse, and sub- 
stantia. By the first, they mean that which constitutes the substance, 
the kind of thing it is: or its nature, if it be a thing created. By the 
second, they mean the state of being in existence. By the third, they 
mean the subject itself, which exists, and to which the essence belongs. 
Subsistence differs from substance, as mode differs from that of which it 
is the mode. To call a thing substance only affirms that it is an exist- 
ing thing. Its subsistence marks the mode in which it exists. E. g., 
matter and spirit are both substances of different kinds. But they 
subsist very differently. The infinite spirit exists as a simple, indivisi- 
ble substance ; but it subsists as three persons. Such is perhaps the 
most intelligible account of the use of these two terms; but the pupil 
will see, if he analyses his own ideas, that they help him to no nearer 
or clearer conception of the personal distinction. 

The word Person, prosopon, persona, (sometimes hupostasis, in the 
later Greeks), means more than the Latin idea, of a role sustained for 
the time being ; but less than the popular modern sense, in which it is 
employed as equivalent to individual. Its meaning will be more fully 



110 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

defined below. Homousios means of identical substance. The Greek 
Fathers also employed the word emperichoresis, intercomprehension, 
to signify that the personal distinction implied no separation of sub- 
stance. But, on the contrary, there is the most intimate mutual em- 
bracing of each in each ; what we should call, were the substance mate- 
rial, an interpenetration. 

§ II. Three tendencies of Opinion on Trinity. — The subsistence 
of the three persons in the Godhead was the earliest subject of general 
schism in the primitive Church. To pass over the primitive Gnostic 
and Manichaean sects, three tendencies, or schools of opinion, may be 
marked in the earlier ages ; and in all subsequent times, the Orthodox, 
or Trinitarian, the Monarchian, and the Arian. The first will be ex- 
pounded in its place. The tendency of mind prompting both the others 
may be said to be the same, and indeed, the same which has prevailed 
ever since, viz : a desire to evade the inscrutable mystery of three in 
one, by so explaining the second and third persons, as to reach an abso- 
lute unity both of person and substance, for the self-existent God. 
(amoneaeche.) Hence, it may justly be said that Arianism, and even 
Socinianism, are as truly monarchian theories, as that of Noe'tus, to 
whom the title was considered as most appropriate. 

Patripassion. — Noetus, an obscure clergyman, (if a clergyman) of 
Smyrna, is said to have founded a sect on the doctrine, that there is 
only one substance and person in the Godhead ; that the names, Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost, are nothing but names for certain phases of action 
or roles, which God successively assumes. Christ was this one person, 
the Godhead or Father, united to a holy man, Jesus, by a proper Hy- 
postatic union. The Holy Ghost is still this same person, the Father, 
acting His part as revealer and sanctifier. Hence, it is literally true, 
that the Father suffered, i. e., in that qualified sense in which the God- 
head was concerned in the sufferings experienced by the humanity, in 
the Mediatorial Person. This theory, while doing violence to Scripture, 
and deranging our theology in many respects, is less fatal by far, than 
that of Arians, and Socinians : because it retains the proper divinity of 
the Messiah, and of the Holy Ghost. 

Sabellian. — The Sabellian theory (broached by Sabellius, of Pen- 
tapolis in Lybia Cyrenaica, about A. D., 268,) has been by some repre- 
sented, as though it were hardly distinguishable from the Patripassian ; 
and as though he made the names, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost the 
mere titles of three modes of action which the one Godhead successively 
assumes. By others it has been represented as only a sort of high 
Socinianism, as though he had taught that the Holy Ghost was an influ- 
ence emanating from the Godhead, and Christ was a holy man upon 
whom a similar influence had been projected. But Mosheim has shown, 
I think, in his Com. de liebus, &c, that both are incorrect, and that" 
the theory of Sabellius was even more abstruse than either of these. 
The term which he seems to have employed was that the Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost are three forms (schemata) of the Godhead, which pre- 
sented real portions of His substance, extended into them, as it were, 
by a sort of spiritual division. Thus, the Son and Holy Ghost are not 
parts of the Father ; but all three are parts, or forms, of a more rec- 
ondite godhead. According to this scheme, therefore, the Son and Holy 
Ghost are precisely as divine as the Father: but it will appear to the 



OF LECTURES IK THEOLOGY. ill 

attentive student very questionable, whether the true godhead of all 
three is not vitiated. 

Arian. — The theory of Arius is so fully stated, and well known, 
that though more important, it needs few words. He represents the 
Son, prior to His incarnation, as an infinitely exalted creature, pro- 
duced (or generated) by God out of nothing, endued with the nearest 
possible approximation to His own perfections, adopted into sonship, 
clothed with a sort of deputized divinity, and employed by God as His 
glorious agent in all His works of creation and redemption. The Holy 
Ghost is merely a katisma katismatos, produced by the Son. 

Error tends either to obliterate or widen personal distinc- 
tions — Now, it has been well stated by Dr. Hill, that there can be but 
three schemes in substance : the orthodox, the Patripassian, and the 
Subordinationist. All attempts to devise some other path, have merged 
themselves virtually into one or the other of these errors. Either the 
personal distinctions are obliterated, or they are so widened as to make 
the Son another, and an inferior substance. Now, the refutation of 
the latter schemes will be sufficiently accomplished if we succeed (in 
the next Lecture) in establishing the proper divinity, and identity of 
substance of the Son. 

Patripassian scheme refuted. — The refutation of the former class 
of theories is effected by showing that some true and definite distinc- 
tion of persons is predicated in Scripture, of the Father, Son and Holy 
Ghost. It will appear in so many places, asserted in so many forms, so 
intertwined with the very woof of the Scriptures, that its denial does 
fatal violence to the integrity of their language, a.) I point to those 
numerous passages, where one Person is said to act upon, or act through 
another. See, e. g., Exod. xxiii : 20 ; Ps. ii : 6, ex., Is. xlii : 1 ; 
liii : 12 ; Jno. xv : 26 ; xx : 21, &c, &c, where God the Father is said 
to send, to enthrone, to appoint, to sacerdotal office, to up\old, to reward 
the Son, and the Son and Father to send the Holy Ghost, b.) Consider 
those, in which mutual principles of affection are said to subsist between 
the persons. Is. xlii: 1 ; Jno. x : 17, 18, &c„ &c. c.) There is a multi- 
tude of other passages, where voluntary principles and volitions are 
said to be exercised by the several persons as such, towards inferior 
and external objects. Exod. xxiii: 21. (The subject is the Messiah, 
as will be proved.) Eph. iv ; 30; Rev. vi : 16, &c, &c. Yet, since 
these principles are all perfectly harmonious, as respects the three per- 
sons, there is no dissension of will, breach in unity of council, or dif- 
ference of perfections, d.) There is a still larger multitude of texts, 
which assert of the persons as such, actions and agencies towards infe- 
rior, external objects. See, for instance, Jno. v; 19; 1 Cor. xii : 11, 
&c., &c. Now, if these personal names, of Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, meant no more than three influences or energies, or three phases 
of action of the same person, or three forms of one substance, is it not 
incredible that all these properties of personality, choosing, loving, ha- 
ting, sending and being sent, understanding, acting, should be asserted 
of them 1 It would be the wildest abuse of language ever dreamed of. 

§111. Definition of Trinity. — The doctrine of the Trinity, as 
held by the Catholic Church, cannot be better defined, than in the 
words of our confession. (Recite ch. II, §3.) It embraces the fol- 
lowing propositions : 



112 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

1. The true unity, indivisibility, and simplicity of God 

2. The subsistence of a threefold personal distinction, marked by a 
part of the properties of separate personalities, (in some inscrutable 
manner entirely compatible with true unity) as intelligence, active 
principles, volition, action. 

3. Identity of substance, so that the whole godhead is truly in each 
person, without confusion or division, and all the essence belongs alike 
to all the persons. 

4. The distinction of the three persons, each by Ms property, incom- 
municable from one person to another, and the existence consequently, 
of an eternal relation between them. 

Inscrutable ; but not impossible. — Now, that it is inscrutable 
how these things can be, we freely admit. Did they involve a neces- 
sary self-contradiction, we should also admit, that the understanding 
would be incapable of receiving them all together. But we do not 
hold that the persons are three in the same sense in which they are one. 
If it be asked what is the precise meaning of the phrase, person in the 
Godhead f we very freely answer, that we know only in part. You 
will observe that all the Socinian and Rationalist objections mentioned 
in your text-books against this doctrine, either proceed on the misrep- 
resentation, that we make three equal to one, (as in the notorious So- 
cinian formula ; let a. b. c. represent the persons, and x. the Godhead ; 
then a=x: b=x : c=x. Add, and we have a-|-b.-[-c=3x=x,) in the 
same sense ; or they are argu,/ienta ad ignorantiam. But is it not just 
what we should expect, that when God reveals something about the 
subsistence of His being, it should be thoroughly inscrutable to us ? 
We must remember that the human mind has no cognizance of sub- 
stance, in fact, except as the unknown ground, to which our intuitions 
impell us to refer properties. It is only the properties that we truly 
know. This is true of material substance ; how much more true of 
spiritual substance ? And more yet of the infinite? God, in reveal- 
ing Himself to the natural reason, only reveals His properties or at- 
tributes — His substance remains as invisible as ever. Look back, I 
pray you, to that whole knowledge of God which we have acquired thus 
far, and you will see that it is nothing but a knowledge of attributes. 
Of the substance to which these properties are referred, we have only 
learned that it is. What it is, remains impenetrable to us. We have 
named it simple spirit. But is this, after all, more than a name, and 
the affirmation of an unknown fact to our understandings? For, when 
we proceed to examine our own conception of spirit, we find that it is 
a negation of material attributes only. Our very attempts to conceive 
of it, (even formed after we have laid down this as our prime feature 
of it, that it is the antithesis of matter,) in its substance, are still ob- 
structed by an inability to get out of a materialistic circle of notions. 
We name it pneuma, spiri us, breath ; as though it were only a gaseous 
and transparent form of matter; and only differed thus from the solid 
and opaque. This obstinate materialistic limit of our conceptions 
arises, I suppose, from the fact, that conceptions usually arise from 
perceptions, and these are only of sensible, i. e., of material ideas. 
This obstinate incapacity of our minds may be further illustrated by 
asking ourselves: What is really our conception of God's immensity? 
When we attempt the answer do we not catch ourselves always framing 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 113 

the notion of a transparent body extended beyond assignable limits 
Nothing more ! Yet, reason compels us to hold that God's substance 
is not extended at all, neither as a vast solid, nor a measureless ocean 
of liquid, nor an immense volume of hydrogen gas expanded beyond 
limit. Extension, in all these forms, is a property wholly irrelevant 
to spirit. Again : (and this is most in point,) every Socinian objection 
which has any plausibility in it, involves this idea ; that a trinity of 
Persons must involve a division of God's substance into three parts. 
But we know that divisibility is not a property of spirit at all — the 
dea is wholly irrelevant to it, belonging only to matter. 

Objections all materialistic — The Socinian would say here : 
1 Precisely so ; and hence we reason against the impossibility of a trin- 
ity in unity. If divisibility is totally irrelevant to infinite Spirit, then 
it is indivisible, and so, can admit no trinity. 

Inspect this carefully, and you will find that it is merely a verbal 
fallacy. The Socinian cheats himself with the notion that he knows 
something here, of the divine substance, which he does not know. By 
indivisible here, he would have us understand the mechanical power of 
utterly resisting division, like that imputed to an atom of matter. But 
has Spirit this material property 1 This is still to move in the charmed 
circle of material conceptions. The true idea is, not that the divine 
substance is materially atomic ; but that the whole idea of parts and 
separation is irrelevant to its substance, in both a negative and affirma- 
tive sense. To say that Spirit is indivisible, in that material sense, is 
as false as to say that it is divisible. Thus the stock argument of 
the Socinian against the possibility of a trinity is found to be a fallacy ; 
and it is but another instance of our incompetency to comprehend the 
real substance of spirit, and of the confusion which always attends our 
efforts to do so. We cannot disprove here, by our own reasonings, any 
more than we can prove ; for the subject is beyond our cognition. 

I pray the student to bear in mind, that I am not here attempting 
to explain the Trinity, but just the contrary : I am endeavouring to 
convince him that it cannot be explained. (And because it cannot be 
explained, it cannot be rationally rebutted.) I would show him that 
we must reasonably expect to find the doctrine inexplicable, and to 
leave it so. I wish to show him that all our difficulties on this doctrine 
arise froiu the vain conceit that we comprehend something of the sub- 
sistence of God's substance, when, in fact, we only apprehend some- 
thing. Could men be made to see that they comprehend nothing, all 
the supposed impossibilities would vanish ; there would remain a pro- 
found and majestic mystery. 

§ IV. Rational Explanations of Greek Scholastics. — The min- 
from which every attempted rationale of the Trinity has come, was the 
New Platonic ; and the chief media of their introduction to the Christ 
tian Theology, Clem. Alexandrinus and Origen. Following the trinita- 
rian scheme which the New Platonists attributed (with insufficient 
grounds) to Plato, of To on,Nous and Psyche; they usually represent God 
the Father as the intelligent substance, intrinsically and eternally active, 
the Nous, as the idea of self, generated from eternity by God's self- 
intellection ; and the Psyche, as the active complacency arising upon 
it. The Platonizing Fathers, who called themselves orthodox, were 



114 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

not slow to fling the charge of monarchianism (Mone Arche) against 
all Patripassians and Arians alike ; as reaching by diverse roads, an 
assertion of a single divine person. The modern student will be apt 
to think that their rationalism betrays the very same tendency; an 
unwillingness to bow the intellect to the dense mystery of a real and 
proper three in one ; and an attempt to evade it by virtually destroying 
the personality of the 2d and 3d persons. 

Of Aquinas. — This attempted explanation appears, with new com- 
pleteness and fullness, after the Peripatetics had modified the Platonic 
system, in the Latin Scholastics. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, states 
the matter about thus : Infinite activity of thought is the very essence 
of the Divine substance. But from eternity there was but a two-fold 
object of thought for this intellect to acton — God's self, and His decree. 
Now, as man is made intellectually in God's image, we cannot conceive 
of God's thinking, except by conceiving of our own acts of thought as 
the finite type of which His is the infinite antitype. Now, when man 
thinks, or conceives, it is only by means of a species or image of that 
which is the object of his thought, present before his mind. So, God's 
very act of thinking of Himself and His decree generates in the divine 
mind, a species of them; it generates them eternally; because God is 
eternally and necessarily active in thinking. This species or idea is 
therefore eternal as God, yet generated by God, it is of the same 
essence, for it is a non-corporeal, spiritual entity, and God's essence is 
pure intellection. It is one with God; for it is God's idea of Himself, 
and Sis own eternal purpose which is Himself purposing. This is the 
Logos, the 2d Person. Again, as in our souls, so in God, the presence 
of a moral object in conception awakens moral sentiment, and of a plan 
or device, approval or disapproval; so, God's contemplation of this 
idea of Himself and His decree, begets a moral complacency, and a 
volition to effectuate (when the fullness of time shall have come) the 
decree. This complacency and volition are the Spirit, the 3d or prac- 
tical Person of the Godhead, proceeding from the Father and the Idea, 
or Logos. 

Objections to it. — This rationale we cannot but regard as worth- 
less, though ingenious. First, the Scriptures inform us in advance, 
that God is inscrutable ; and that we need not expect to explain His 
subsistence. Job ii : 7. Second-. According to this explanation, both 
the Nous and the Psyche would be compounded, the former of the 
two species of God's being, and of His decree ; the latter of two feelings, 
His moral self-complacency, and His volition to effectuate His decree. 
Third: Neither the 2d nor 3d persons would be substance at all, but 
mere idea and feeling, which have no entity whatever, except as affec- 
tions of the substance of the Father. This seems to our minds an ob- 
jection so obvious and conclusive, that no doubt the student is almost 
incredulous that acute men should have seriously advanced a theory 
obnoxious to it. The ar.swer is, that the Platonic and Peripatetic 
metaphysics ignored, in a manner astonishing to the modern mind, the 
distinction between substance and attribute. Betweeu the two kinds 
of entity, they drew no generic distinction. But is not this one of the 
very traits of modern, trancendental Idealism, from Spinoza down 1 
Fourth : On this scheme of a trinity, I see not how the conclusion 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 115 

could be avoided, that every intelligent free agent is as much a finite 
trinity in unity as God is an infinite one. Let us then attempt no ex- 
planation where explanation is impossible. 

§ V. Proof of Trinity wholly of Revelation. — Having thus 
defined the doctrine, we proceed to its proof. That this evidence for 
the Trinity must be wholly a matter of revelation, would appear suffi- 
ciently from the weakness of the attempt made by the Scholastics, to 
find some proof or presumptive probability in the light of reason. The 
most plausible of these, perhaps, is that which Neander informs us, 
Raymund Lully employed against the Unitarian Moslems of Barbury, 
which is not discarded even by the great Aquinas.*'* They say God is 
immutable from eternity. He exists now in a state of active benevo- 
lence. Hence, there must have always been, from eternity, some sense 
in which God had an object of His benevolence, in some measure ex- 
traneous; else active benevolence would have been impossible; and 
the result would be, that the creation of the angels (or earliest holy 
creatures) would have constituted an era of change in God. The rea- 
soning appears unsound by this simple test. God is now actively 
righteous and punitive, as well as good ; and a parallel argument will 
prove, therefore, with equal conclusiveness, the eternity of a devil. 
The solution of the sophism is to be found in those remarks, by which 
we defended God's immutability against the objection, that the creation 
of the universe constituted a change in God. It does not ; because 
God's purpose to create, when His chosen time should have come, was 
unchangeably present with Him from eternity. Creation makes the 
change in the creature : not in God. 

General Direct Proofs. — The Scripture evidence for a Trinity 
presents itself in two forms. The most extensive and conclusive may 
be called the indirect and inferential proof, which consists in these two 
facts when collated : 1st. That God is one. 2d. That not only the 
Father, but the Son and Holy Ghost, are proper God. This evidence 
presents itself very extensively over the Bible; and the two proposi- 
tions may be said to be intertwined with its whole woop and warf. 
The other testimony is the general direct testimony, where a plurality 
in the one God is either stated or involved in some direct statement. 
The latter evidence is the one we present now; the former will become 
evident as we present the proof of the Divinity of the 2d and 3d 
Persons. 

The text-books assigned to the students present a collection and 
discussion of those passages so complete, that I shall not make an un- 
necessary recapitulation. I shall only set down a list of those passages 
which I consider relevant; and conclude with a few cursive remarks 
on the argument in a few points. The student, then, may solidly ad- 
vance the following testimonies, as cited and expounded by the Books. 

From the Old Testament: 

Gen. i: 2, with Ps. civ; 30; Prov. viii : 22, &c. 

Gen. i: 26; iii : 22; xi : 7; Is. vi : 8. 

Numb, vi; 24-26, may have some feeble weight when collated with 
Is. vi : 3, and 2 Cor. xiii : 14. 

Hosea i : 7; Is. xliii: 16; Ps. xlv : 6. 

The argument from the plural forms Adonim, Elohim it seems to me 
ought to be surrendered after the objections of Calvin and Buxtorff. 



116 SYLLABUS AKD NOTE& 

In the New Testament a very clear argument arises from the formula 
of Baptism. Matt, xxviii: 19. The only objections of any plausi- 
bility, is that from 1 Cor. x: 2 — "Baptised unto Moses." In addition 
to the answers of Turrettin, it is surely sufficient to say, that this is a 
very different case from that where the names of the 2d and 3d persons 
are connected with that of God the Father in the same sentence and 
same construction. 

Another indisputable argument is derived from the Apostolic bene- 
diction. 2 Cor- xiii ; 14. See also Rev. i: 4, 5 ; 1 Cor. xii : 4-6. 

The argument from the baptism of Christ seems to me possessed of 
some force, when the meaning of the Father's avowal, and of the 
Spirit's descent are understood in the light of Scripture. 

The much litigated passage in 1 John v: 7, is certainly of too doubt- 
ful genuineness to be advanced, polemically, against the adversaries of 
the Trinity; however we may believe that the tenour of its teaching 
is agreeable to that of the Scriptures elsewhere. 



LECTUKE XV. 



SYLLABUS. 
DIVINITY OP CHRIST. 

1. Prove that Christ is very Gjd, from what the Scripture say of Hispre- 
ezistence. 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, que. 2-8. Hill, Bk. iii, ch. 3 and 4. Dick, Lect. 30th. 
Watson's Theol. Inst., pt. ii, ch. x. 

2. "What is the doctrine of the Old Testament concerning the proper divinity 
of the Messiah ? And was He the person revealed in the theophanies ? 

Hill's Div., Bk. iii, ch. 5. Hengstenherg's Christolegie, vol. i, ch. 3. Dick, 
Lect. 31. "Watson, pt. ii, ch. xi. 

3. Are the divine names ascribed to Christ ? 

Turrettin. as above. Hill's Div., Bk. iii, ch. 7, § 1. Dick, Lect. 30, 31. 
Watson, pt. 2, ch. xii. 

4. Are the divine attributes given to Christ ? 

Turrettin, as above. Hill, as above, § 2. Dick, Lect. 31. Watson, as 
above, ch. xiii. 

5. Are the divine works ascribed to Christ ? 
Same authorities. Watson, as above, ch. xiv. 

6. Is divine worship in the Scriptures rendered to Christ ? 

Turrettin, as above. Hill, as above, § 3. Dick, Lect. 32. Watson, as 
above, ch. xv. See on the whole, Abbadie, on the Trinity. Wardlaw's 
Socinian Controversy. Moses Stuart against Channing. Evasions and 
objections to be argued under their appropriate heads. 

A prime article. — This may be called aprime article of revealed the- 
ology ; affecting not only the subsistence of the Godhead, but the ques- 
tions whether Christ is to be trusted, obeyed, and worshipped as God, 



OF LECTURES IK THEOLOGY. liy 

the nature and efficacy of His atoning offices, the constitution of the 
Church, and all its rites. He who believes in the divinity of Jesus 
Christ is a Christian ; he who does not, (whatever his professions), is a 
mere Deist. Without this Divinity, the Bible is, "the Drama of Ham 
let, with the part of Hamlet omitted." 

Argued Scripturally under five Heads. — We have already estab- 
lished a trinity of persons in the Godhead; and this alone, if validly 
proved, would show the divinity of Jesus Christ. For where else in 
Revelation, than in the persons of Him and the Holy Ghost can the 
other persons be so naturally and plausibly found? But, not to urge 
this . the general strain of the language of the Old and New Testaments 
produces an overwhelming impression, that they mean to represent the 
Messiah as divine. Note the contrast between their descriptions of 
Him, and of Moses, the greatest of men ; the fact that Jews have almost 
uniformly understood the New Testament as inculcating it, and thus 
rejected it as idolatrous; the laborious evasions to which Socinians are 
are obliged to resort ; and the fact that the great majority of both friends 
and enemies have so understood it. If the Apostles did not intend to 
teach this doctrine they have certainly had the remarkable ill-luck of 
producing the very impression which they should have avoided, espe- 
cially in a Book intended to subvert idolatry. 

There is, as has been intimated, a general testimony for this truth, 
interwoven with the whole texture of Scripture, which cannot be ade- 
quately presented in a few propositions, because of its extent. It can 
only be appreciated by the extended and familiar study of the whole 
Bible. But the more specific arguments for the divinity of Jesus Christ 
have usually been digested into the five heads; of His Pre- existence, 
Names, Attributes, Works, and Worship. This distribution is suffi- 
ciently correct. My purpose will be, to employ the very limited space 
I can allot to so extensive an argument, first in giving you a syllabus 
of it, which shall possess some degree of completeness; and second, in 
illustrating some of the more important testimonies, so as to exhibit, in 
a few instances, the manner in which they apply, and exegetical eva- 
sions are to be quashed. 

I. Christ's pre-existence. — If Jesus Christ had an exi.-tence before 
He was born of the virgin, this at once settles the question, as Hill re- 
marks, that He is not mere man. And if this pre-existence was char- 
acterized by eternity, independence, or divine works of Creation, and 
Providence, it further settles the question that He was not a creature. 
The theophanies of a second person of the Godhead, if revealed in the 
Old Testament, [and if that person can be identified with Jesus Christ], 
as well as His works of creation, if ascribed to Him, will be parts of 
this argument for His pre-existence, as well as fall under other heads. 

But we find a more direct testimony for His pre-existence contained 
in a number of passages, where Christ is said to have been "sent," to 
have "come from heaven," to "come into the world," to be "made 
flesh," &c, &c. See Jno. iii:31; vi : 38 ; xvi : 28 ; xiii : 3 ; vi : 62 ; 
1 Jno. iv : 23 ; Jno. i : 14 ; Heb. ii : 7, 9, 14, 16. Of one of us, it may 
be popularly said that we came into existence, came into the world ; 
but these phrases could not be used with propriety, of one who then 
only began to exist. 

Consult also, Jno.i: 1-17; ill : 13 ; viii ; 58; xvii : 5 ; 1 Cor. xv : 47 : 



118 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

2 Cor. viii : 9 ; Heb. i : 10, 1 1 ; Rev. i : 8, 17 ; ii : 8 ; iii : 14 ; Jno. i : 
15, 30. 

Jno. i : &c. — In the passage, from Jno. i; 1-17, only two evasions 
seem to have a show of plausibility : 1st, to deny the personality of the 
Logos 2nd, to deny that His pre-existence is taught in the phrase, 
enarche. But the first is refuted by showing that the Logos is the cre- 
ator of all; that in verse 4 He is identified with the Phos, which Phos 
again, verses 6, 7, was the object of John Baptist's preparatory minis- 
try ; which Phos again was rejected by the world, verses 10, 11, and 
this Phos, identical with the Logos, was incarnate, (verse 14), was tes- 
tified unto by John Baptist, (verse 15) ; and is finally identified, (verse 
17), with Jesus Christ, the giver of grace and truth. That the phrase, 
enarche, does assert His pre-existence is proved by the resemblance 
of it to the Septuagient rendering of Gen. i : 1. By the author's use of 
en, instead of egeneto, by His association with God, verse 2 showing a 
pre-existence similar to God's; by His creation of all things, (verse 3), 
and by the utter folly of the gloss which would make the Evangelist say 
that Jesus Christ was in existence when His ministry began. That John 
should have used the peculiar philosophic titles, Logos, and Phos, for 
Jesus Christ, is most reasonably explained by the state of opinion and 
theological language when He wrote His Gospel. The Chaldean Para- 
phrase, and the Platouizing tendencies of Philo and his sect, had 
familiarized the speculative Jews to these terms, as expressive of the 
second person ; and meantime, the impious speculations of Judaizing 
Gnostics, represented by Cerinthus, had attempted to identify Jesus 
Christ with one of the Aions of their dreams, a sort of luminous emana- 
tion of the divine intelligence. It was to vindicate the truth from this 
folly, that St. John adopts the words Logos and Phos, in this emphatic 
assertion of the Messiah's proper divinity. See also 1 Jno. i: 1 ; Rev. 
xix: 13. 

II. Divinity of Christ in Old Testament. — That the Messiah was 
to be human, was so clearly revealed in the Old Testament, that no 
Jew misunderstood it. He was to be the Son of David according to 
the flesh. It may seem somewhat incompatible with a similar disclosure 
of His proper divinity, that the Jewish mind should have been so obsti- 
nately closed to that doctrine. But the evidences of it' in the Old Tes- 
tament are so strong, that we are compelled to account for the failure 
of the unbelieving Jews to embrace it, by the stubbornness of preju- 
dice, and death in sin. The Messianic predictions of the Old Testa- 
ment have formed the subjects by themselves, of large volumes ; I can, 
therefore, do little more than enumerate the most conclusive of them 
as to His divinity, giving the preference, of course, to those of them 
which are interpreted of, and applied to, Jesus Christ, by the infallible 
exposition of the New Testament. Compare, then, Num. xiv : 22, and 
xxi : 5, 6, and Ps. xcv : 9, with 1 Cor. x: 9. The tempting of the 
Lord of the Old Testament, is described by Paul as tempting Christ; 
in consequence of which they were destroyed of serpents. Ps. cii : 26, 
ascribes to God an immutable eternity; but Heb. i: 10, 11, applies it 
to Jesus Christ. In Is. vi, the prophet sees a vision of Jehovah, sur- 
rounded with every circumstance of divine majesty. But Jno. xii:41, 
explains : " These things said Esaias, when he saw His glory, and spake 
of Him." Is. xlv; 22, 23. Jehovah says : "Look unto me, and be ye 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 119 

saved, all ye ends of the earth ;" but Bom. xiv: 11, and 1 Cor. i: 30, 
evidently apply the context to Jesus Christ. Thus, also, compare Ps. 
lxviii : 18, with Eph. iv : 8, 9 ; Joel, ii : 32, with Rom. x : 13 ; Is. vii : 
14, with Matt, i : 22 ; Micah. v : 2, with Matt, ii : 6, and Mai. iii : 1, 
with Mark i : 2, and Luke i: lxxvi. The three last pairs of references 
contain a proof peculiarly striking. In Is. vii: 14, the child born of a 
virgin is to be named God with us. In Matt, i : 22, a child, Jesus 
Christ, is born of a virgin, and receives, by divine injunction, through 
the mouth of an angel, the name God with us ; because He was con- 
ceived of the Holy Ghost, and was to save His people from their sins. 
In Micah. v: 2, Bethlehem is destined to the honor of bringing forth 
the Buler whose attribute was eternity ; in Matt, ii : 6, it is declared 
that this prediction is fulfilled by the appearance of Jesus Christ. In 
Mai. iii; 1, the Angel of the Covenant is foretold. He is identified 
with Jesus Christ by his forerunner, John, who is expressly declared to 
be the person here predicted, by Luke i : 76. But that this angel is 
divine, is clear from his propriety in the temple ("his temple") which 
is God's house, and from the divine functions of Judge and heart- 
Searcher, which He there exercises. In Ps. ex: 1, David calls the Mes- 
siah Adonai, though His descendant according to the flesh. In Matt. 
xxii : 45, Christ Himself applies this to the Messiah (■" What think ye 
of Christ f Whose Son is He ?") ; and challenges them (in substance) to 
account for it without granting His divinity. And this 1 10th Psalm, 
then proceeds to ascribe to this Being eternity of priesthood, (v. 4,) as 
expounded Heb. vii: 3, as having "neither beginniog of days, nor end 
of life," supreme authority, and judgment over maukind. Tae Ps. 2, 
describes God as setting His King upon His holy hill of Zion: who is 
declared to be His eternal Son, (v. 7,) the Ruler of the whole earth, 
(v. 8,) the sovereign avenger of His opponents, (v. 9,) and the appointed 
object of religious trust. Surely these are divine attributes, c.) Jer. 
xvii : 5. But Acts iv : 25-28, attribute the whole prediction to Jesus 
Christ. So Ps. xlv : 6, call the king God, (Elohim,) and attributes to 
Him an everlasting throne. But Heb. i : 8, applies these words to the 
Son, afterwards defined to be Jesus Christ. So let the student compare 
for himself, (for time will fail me to go into explanation of every text,) 
Zech. xii: 10, with John xix : 37, Is. lxi : 1; (Speaker calls Himself 
I, the Lord, v. 8,) with Luke iv : 18-21. Examine, also, Is. iv : 2 ; 
ix: 5, 6,7; xi: 4, 10; Ps. lxxii : 17, 5; Dan. vii: 13, 14. Zech. 
chap, xiii : 7, compared with xi : 13; xii: 10; Jer. xxiii : 5,6. 

Argument from the theophanies and Angel of Covenant. — 
But a second important class of Old Testament evidences for the divi- 
nity of Christ, will appear when we inquire who was the Person who 
appeared in the theophanies granted to the Patriarchs. A personal 
distinction by which God the Father might disclose Himself to man in 
another person than His own, seems to be indicated by His nature. 
He is called the invisible God. I Tim. i : 17; Heb. xi : 27. It is 
declared that no man can see Him and live. Exod. xxxiii: 20; and 
we read, in the cases of some of the theophanies, that the persons 
favoured with them were amazed at their surviving the fearful privi- 
lege. Gen. xxxii: 30; Judges vi : 22,23. But besides this concealed 
Person, who, though everywhere present, rarely makes Himself cogni- 
sable, and never visible to mortals, the New Testament, especially, 



120 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

informs us of another Person, the same in essence, whose office it has 
ever been, since God had a Church, to act as the mediating Messenger 
and Teacher of that Church, and bring man into providential and gra- 
cious relations with the inaccessible God. This function Christ has 
performed, both before and since His incarnation ; and thus He is the 
Word, the Light, the visible Image to man of the invisible Godhead. 
See Jno. i : 9 ; i : 18 ; 1 Jno. i : 1,2; 2 Cor. iv : 4 ; Heb. i : 3. 

Yet this distinction cannot be pushed so far as though the Father 
never communicates with men, as the 1st person. Some of the very 
places cited to prove the divinity of the Son, show the Father as such, 
testifying to the Son. Ps. ii, and ex. And in Exod. xxiii: 20; xxxii: 
34, language is used by a person, concerning another person, under the 
title of angel, which cannot possibly be identified as one ; yet both are 
divine. It would be a great error, therefore, and would throw this 
whole argument into confusion, to exclude Jehovah the Father wholly 
from these communications to Old Testament saints, and attribute all 
the messages to the Son immediately. It so happens that Moses re- 
ceived these theophanies, in which we are compelled to admit the per- 
sonal presence of the 1st person per se, as well as the 2d. May not 
this be the explanation, that He was honoured to be the Mesites of 
the Old Testament Church, in a sense in which no other mere man ever 
was: in that He communicated directly with the person of the Father? 
Exod. xxxiii : 11. Did not Jehovah Christ speak face to face to Jacob, 
Abraham, Manoah 1 &c. 

Augustine's difficulty. — Auother seeming difficulty presents itself 
(said to have been urged with confidence by St. Augustine and other 
Fathers) from Heb. i: 1, 2, and ii : 2, 3. The Apostle, it is urged, 
seems here to teach, that the Old Testament was distinguished from 
the New, by being not communicated through God, (the Son,) but 
through creatures, as agents. I answer, if the texts be strained into 
this meaning, they will then contradict the context. For the theopha- 
nies and other immediate divine communications must be imputed to 
a divine person, the Father, if not the Son ; and then there would be 
no basis, on their premises, for the Apostle's argument, that the New 
Testament was more authoritative, because the teaching of a divine 
minister. The truth is, that the Apostle's contrast is only this : In 
the Old Testament the Messiah did not appear as an incarnate prophet, 
ministering His own message ordinarily and publickly among the peo- 
ple. (His theophanic teachings were always private to some one human 
agent.) In the New Testament He did. Nor can it be supposed that 
The Angel of Jehovah, who presented these theophanies, is explained 
by the di' Angellon, of Heb. ii : 2 He was wholly a different 
Being; their ministry was only attendant, and co-operative, at Sinai. 
(See Stephen, Acts vii ; 53 ; Ps. lxviii : 17 ) 

Instances of theophanies. — The 2d person seems to be identified 
in the following places: Gen. xvi : 7. The Angel of Jehovah found 
Hagar — v. 10; He promises to exert divine power — v. 11; claims to 
have heard her distress ; and v. 13, Hagar is surprised that she survives 
the Divine vision. Gen. xviii, three men visit Abraham identified, xix: 
1, as angels. The chief angel of these three, in xix: 14, 17, &c, 
makes Himself known as Jehovah, receives Abraham's worship, &c. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 121 

And in Gen. xlviii: 15, 16, this Jehovah is called hy Jacob, "the Angel 
which redeemed me from all evil," &c, and invoked to bless Joseph's 
sons, a divine function. Again, in Gen. xxi : 17, The Angel of God 
speaks to Hagar, promising her, v. 18, a divine exertion of power. In 
Gen. xxii: 1, Elohim commands Abraham to take his son Isaac and 
sacrifice him. V. 11, when in the act of doing it, the Angel of Jeho- 
vah arrests, and says, v. 13, "Thou hast not withheld thy son from 
Me ;" and, v. 14, Abraham names the place Jehovah jireh. In Gen. 
xxxi: 11, the Angel of Jehovah appears to Jacob in a dream, identified 
in v. 13, with God, the God of Gen. xxviii : 11-22, the God of Bethel 
then declared Jehovah. In Gen. xxxii : 25, Jacob wrestles with an 
angel, seeks his blessing, and names the place Penuel. This Angel is 
in the narrative called Elohim, and in Hosea xii • 4-6, describing the 
same transaction, Elohim, Angel and Jehovah of Hosts. In the same 
method compare Exod. iii : 2, with v. 4, 6, 14-16; Exod. xiv : 19, 
with v. 24; Exod. xxiii; 20, with subsequent verse ; Exod. xxxii: 24, 
with xxxiii : 3, 4 ; Numb, xxii : 22, with v. 32-35 ; Josh, v : 14, to vi : 
2; Judges ii : 1-4. Compare Judges vi : 11, with v. 14, 15, 18,21,22, 
&c. Judges xiii : 3, with v. 21. . And Is. lxiii : 9 ; Zech. i : 12-15, com- 
pare vi : 15. Compare Zech. iii : 2, with v. 1 ; Ps. xxxiv : 8 ; xxxv : 5. 

Conclusions. — Now, the amount of what has been proved in these 
citations is, that two Persons, both having unquestionable divine attri- 
butes, yet sometimes employing the incommunicable name in common, 
appear on the stage. They are distinguished by unquestioned personal 
distinctions of willing, acting, feeling. One is the Sender, the other is 
the Sent. (Malach.) The one usually acts with a certain reserve and 
invisibility, the other is called the "Angel of His countenance." Is. 
lxiii: 9. Compare with Col. i: 15; Heb. i: 3. To this latter the 
phrase, Angel of Jehovah is so often applied, that it becomes at length 
a proper name. And the completing link of the evidence is given by 
Mai. iii: 1-3. For there the "Angel of the Covenant" is, in the 
text itself, identified with Jehovah ; and in Matt, xi : 10; Mark, i; 2; 
Luke i : 76 ; vii : 27, with Jesus Christ. Thus, these theophanies not 
only disclose a personal distinction in the Godhead, but show the divi- 
nity of Jesus Christ. 

For objections, and theories of evasion, see Hengstenberg. 

III. Names of God given to Christ. — The argument from the 
application of the divine names to Jesus Christ has been in part anti- 
cipated under the last head. To comprehend its full force, the student 
must recall the evidences by which we showed that Jehovah, especially, 
was God's incommunicable name. But in the New Testament this is 
not characteristically rendered, except by Kurios, which stands also 
for Adonai, and Adoni, (the latter applied to human masters.) Hence, 
it may be supposed that the Socinian evasion will be more damaging to 
all the argument from the cases in which the New Testament applies 
the terms Kurios, Theos, to Jesus Christ. That evasion, as you know, 
is that the titles, God, Lord, are applied in Bible language to Mag- 
nates, Magistrates, and Angels ; and, therefore, their application to 
Jesus Christ proves not His proper divinity, but only His dignity. But 
let it be borne in mind, that if the language of the New Testament is 
deficient in the power of distinguishing the communicable from the 



122 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

incommunicable titles of God, it also lacks the usage of applying His 
titles to exalted creatures. There is no example of such a thing in 
the New Testament, except those quoted from the Septuagint. Hence, 
when the New Testament calls Christ Lord and God, the conclusion is 
fair, that it attributes to Him proper divinity. 

Son. — But we argue, first, He is also called God's Son ; and to show 
that this means more than when Angels, Church-members, &c, are 
called sons of God, He is called the beloved Son — God's own Son — God's 
only begotten Son. See Ps. ii: 7; Matt, iii : 17; xvii : 5; Dan. iii; 
25 ; Matt, iv : 3 ; xxvi : 63 ; xxvii : 43, 54 ; Luke i : 35 ; Jno. iii : 18 ; 
x: 36; ix : 7; Rev. ii : 18; cf. v. 8. Here He is called Son, because 
He can work miracles, because begotten by the Holy Ghost. His title 
of Son is conceived by His enemies as a claim of proper divinity, 
which He dies rather than repudiate. The attempts to evade the force 
of the title Only begotten seem peculiarly impotent. One is, that He 
is so called, although only a man, because conceived, without Natural 
Father, by the Holy Ghost. Adam was still more so, having had 
neither Natural Father nor Mother. Yet he is never called only-be- 
gotten. Another is, that Christ is Son, because of His commission and 
inspiration. In this sense, Moses, Elijah, &c, were generically the 
same. But see Heb. iii: 1-6. The third is, that He is called God's 
only begotten Son, because He enjoyed the privilege of a resurrection. 
But the dead man of 2 Kings xiii: 21, the son of the Shunemite, and 
the saints who arose when Christ died, enjoyed the privilege earlier ; 
and Enoch and Elijah enjoyed one still more glorious, a translation. 

For the arguments which rebut the Socinian evasions on this head, 
the student must, for the rest, be referred to text Books and Comments. 
The following proof-texts will be found justly applicable : 

Jno. i : 1,2; x: 30; xx : 28; Acts xx : 28; (somewhat doubtful,) 
Rom. ix : 5 ; 1 Tim. iii : 16; Phil, ii : 6 ; Heb. i : 8 ; 1 Jno. v : 20. 

Texts added by Dr. Middleton. — By the application of a princi- 
ple of criticism asserted by Dr. Granville Sharpe and Dr. Wordsworth, 
of the English Church, and afterwards subjected to a most searching 
text, by Dr. Middleton on the Greek Article, this list of divine names 
applied to Jesus Christ may be much enlarged. Dr. Middleton thus 
states it: "When two or more attributes (i. e., adjectives, participles, 
descriptive substantives) joined by a copulative or copulatives, are as- 
sumed of the same person or thing, before the first Attributive, the Ar- 
ticle is inserted, before the remaining ones omitted; e. g., Plutarch : 

RoSKIOS HO HUIOS KAI KLERONOMOS TOU TETHNEKOTOS &C, where HUIOS 

and kleronomos, describe the one person Roscius. (Proper nouns, ab- 
stract nouns, and simple sames of substances without descriptive connota- 
tion, are exempted from this rule.) Its correctness is sustained by its 
consistent rationale, founded on the nature of the Article, by a multitude 
of classical examples, and by the manner in which the Greek Fathers 
uniformly cite the passages in question from the New Testament. 
They are to be presumed to be best aquainted with their own idiom. 
For instance, Eph. v: 5, we have en tei basileiai tou Christou kai 
theou. Instead of rendering "Kingdom of Christ and of God," we 
should read, Kingdom of Him who is Christ and God. In Titus ii : 13, 
tou megalou theou kai Soteros HEM<fN Jesou Christou, is rendered, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 123 

"of the great God and (of) our Saviour Jesus Christ." It should be " of 
our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ." See also 2 Pet. i : 1. 

IV. Attributes. — The names of God may not be incommunicable, 
and the application of them might possibly be ambiguous therefore ; 
but when we see the incommunicable attributes of God given to Jesus 
Christ, they compose a more irresistable proof that He is very God. 
This is especially strong when those qualities which God reserves to 
Himself alone, are ascribed to Jesus Christ. We find, then ; 

Eternity clearly ascribed to Christ in Ps. cii : 26, as interpreted in 
Heb. i: 11, 12; Prov. viii : 23, &c. Is. ix: 6; Micah v : 2; Jno. i : 
2; 1 Jno. i: 2; Rev. i: 7, 8, 17; iii : 14; xxii : 13; and the last 
three employ the very phrasology in which God asserts His eternity in 
Is. xliii • 10, and xliv : 6. 

Immutability, the kindred attribute, and necessary corollary of eter- 
nity. Ps. cii: 26, as before; Heb. xiii : 8. 

Immensity and omnipresence. Matt, xviii : 20 ; xxviii : 20 ; Jno. iii : 
13: Col. i: 17. 

Omniscience. Matt, xi : 27; Jno. ii : 24, 25; Heb. iv: 12, 13; Luke 
vi: 8; Jno. xvi : 30; xxi : 17; Rev. ii : 23, compared with 1 Kings 
viii : 39 ; Jer. xvii : 10. Here Christ knows the most 'inscrutable of 
all Beings, God Himself; and the human heart, which God claims it 
as His peculiar power to fathom. 

Soveignty and power. Jno. v: 17; Matt, xxviii: 18; Heb. i: 3; 
Rev. i: 8; xi: 15-17. And, in fine, see Col. ii : 9; i: 19. The last 
subdivision will suggest the next head of argument, that from His 
divine works. But upon the whole, it may be remarked, that these 
ascription of divine attributes to Christ leave no evasion. For it is 
in the nature of things simply impossible that a finite nature should 
receive infinite endowments. Even Omnipotence cannot make a part 
to contain the whole. 

V. Works. — Divine works are ascribed to Christ. Hill, with an af- 
fectation of philosophic fairness, which he sometimes carries to an 
unnecessry length, seems to yield the point to the Acrians, in part : 
that as God has endued His different orders of creatures with degrees 
of power so exceedingly various, He may have given to this exalted 
creature powers which to man appear actually boundless; and that 
even the_ proposition, that God might enable him to create a world, by 
filling him with His mighty power, does not appear necessarily absurd. 
But to my mind it seems clear, that there is a limit plain and distinct 
between those things which finite and dependent power can, by a vast 
extension, be enabled to do : and those for which all measures of cre- 
ated power are alike incompetent. There are many things which are 
superhuman, which perhaps are not superangelic. Satan may perhaps 
have power to move an atmospheric storm, before which man and his 
mightiest works would be a stubble. But Satan is as unable to create 
a fly out of nothing, as is man. For the performance of this kind of 
works, by deputation, no increase of finite power can prepare a crea- 
ture Moreover, to create a world such as ours, to direct it by a con- 
trolling providence, to judge its rational inhabitants, so as to apportion 
to every man according to his works; all this implies the possession 
of omnipressence, infinite knowledge, memory," and attention, as im- 



124 SYLLABUS AND NOTE^ 

possible for a creature to exercise, as infinite power. But, however 1 
this may be, Scripture always ascribes creation to God as a divine 
work. This is done, first, in many express passages, as Jer. x: 10-12 ; 
Ps. xcv ; civ; Rev. iv: 10, 11 ; and second, by all those passages, as Ps. 
xix : 1-7, in which we are directed to read the greatness and character of 
God in^-he works of creation. If He used some other rational agent in 
the work, why is Creator so emphatically His title 1 And why are we so 
often referred to His works to learn His attributes? And once more, 
the most noted passages, as Jno. i : 1-3, in which creation is ascribed 
to the Son, contain most emphatic assertions of His partaking the 
divine essence ; so that it is plain the divinity of the work was in the 
writer's mind. 

The space allotted to this argument will forbid my going into the 
Socinian evasions of the several texts, tortuous and varied as they are. 
The most important of them may be seen handled with great skill by 
Dr. Hill, Bk. iii, ch. 3 and 4. But we clearly find the following divine 
works ascribed to Jesus Christ: 

Creation of the world. Prov. viii : 23, 27, &c; Jno. i: 1-3; Col. i: 
15-17; Heb. i: 1-3, 10. And along with this, may be mentioned his 
sustentation of all things, asserted in the same passages. 

Miracles, performed, not by deputed, but by autocratic power. Jno. 
v: 21; vi: 40; Acts iv : 7, 10; ix: 34; cf. Jno. v : 36 ; Mark'ii: 
8-11. Jno. ii: 19; x- 18: Rom. i: 4. 

Forgiving sin. Mark ii : 10. 

Judging men and angels. Matt, xxv : 31, 32; 2 Cor. v: 10; Rom. 
xiv: 10; Acts xvii : 31; Jno. v : 22. True, it is said that the Twelve 
shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel : Matt, 
xix: 22, and that the saints shall judge angels; but other Scriptures 
explain this, that they shall be merely assessors of Jesus Christ. 

VI. Worship. — Last. The peculiar worship of God is given to 
Christ. See Matt, xxviii : 19; Luke xxiv : 52; Jno. v : 23 ; Actsvii: 
59, 60 ; Jno. xiv: 1 ; and Ps. ii : 12, compared with Jer. xvii: 5 ; Acts 
ix : 14 ; 1 Cor. i : 2 ; Phil, ii ; 10 ; Heb. i : 6 ; Rev. i : 5, 6 ; vii : 10 ; 
v: 13. 

In connexion weigh these passages, as showing how unlikely the 
Scripture would be to permit such worship, (or Christ Himself,) if He 
were not proper God. Is. xlii 8 ; Matt, iv : 10; or Luke iv : 8; Mark 
xii : 29 ; Acts xiv: 14, 15; Rev. xix: 10; xxii : 9. Remember that 
the great object of Scripture is to reclaim the world from idolatry. 

The Arian and Socinian evasions are well stated and refuted by Hill, 
Bk. iii, ch. 7, § 3. 



OF LECTURES IK THEOLOGY. 125 

LECTUKE XVI. 



SYLLABUS. 
DIVINITY OP THE HOLY GHOST, AND OF THE SON. 

1. What is the doctrine of the Socinians, Arians, and Orthodox concerning 
the Holy Ghost ? ■ 

Hai-enbach, Hist, of Doctr., (Arianism.) Hill, Bk. iii, ch. 9. Tnrrettin, 
Loc. iii, que. 30. 

2. Prove the Personality of the Holy Ghost. 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, que. 30, § 1-11. Owen on the Holy Ghost, Bk. i, ch. 
2, 3. Dick, Lect. 33. Hill, as above. Dwight's Theology, (sub voce.) 
Knapp, Sect, xxxix. 

3. Prove from the Scriptures the divinity of this Person. 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, que. 30, § 12-end. Dick, Hill, and Dwight, as above. 
Knapp, Sect. xl. 

4. State the controversy between the Greek and Latin Churches, on the pro- 
cession of the Holy Ghost. Which party was in the right ? Why ? 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, que. 31. Dick and Hill, as above. 

5. Do the offices of the 2d and 3d persons in Redemption imply the possession 
of proper divinity by them ? 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, que. 24. Dick, Lect. 32. Hill, Bk. iii, ch. 8, end. 

1. History of Doctrine or Holy Ghost. — The Arian controversy 
was so fiercely agitated concerning the divinity of the 2d person, 
that the 3d Person was almost overlooked in it, by both parties. It 
is stated that Arius held the Holy Ghost to be a person — but a crea- 
ture — the first creature namely, which the Son brought into existence 
by the Father's instructions, after His own creation. He was thus, 
ktisma ktismatos. On the other hands, few, perhaps, of the ortho- 
dox, except Athanasius, saw clearly the necessity of extending to Him 
likewise the same essence, (homoosion,) with the Father; and attribut- 
ing to Him in the work of Redemption, proper, divine attributes. The 
most of them, e. g., a great anti-Arian writer, Hilary of Aries, con- 
tented themselves with saying, that He was a Person, and was spoken 
of in Scripture as a divine Spirit, and God's beneficent Agent in sanc- 
tification ; but that farther than this, the Scriptures did not bear Him 
out. A little after the middle of the 4th century, Mascedonius, pri- 
mate of Constantinople, was led by his semi-Arian Views to teach that 
the Holy Grhost was but a name for the divine power and influences, 
diffused from the Father through the Son. It was this error, along 
with others, occasioned the revisal of the Nicene Creed, by the 2d 
Council of Constantinople. Yet even this, while attributing to the 
Holy Grhost a procession from the Father, and the same worship and 
glory attributed to the Father and Son, and while calling Him Life- 
giving Lord, still did not expressly ascribe to Him the phrase homoosion 
toi Patri. The consubstantial divinity of the Holy Ghost, however, 
continued to be the practical doctrine of the Church Catholic. When 
the Socinians, in the 16th century, sought to overthrow the doctrine 
of the Trinity, they represented all that is said of the Holy Ghost as 
mere parallel locutions for the Godhead ^itself, or as impersonations 
of the power, energy, wisdom, or general influence of the Godhead on 



126 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

created souis. The words, Holy Ghost, then, are the name, not of a 
Person, but of an abstraction. 

2. His Personality. — Hence, the first task which we should assume, 
is to learn what the Scriptures teach concerning the personality of this 
Being. We may premise, with Dick, that it is natural and reasonable 
that the Scriptures would say less to evince the personality and divi- 
nity of the Holy Grhost than of the Son ; because in the order of the 
divine manifestation in Redemption, the Son is naturally and properly 
revealed first. The purchase precedes the application of Redemption. 
But after a plurality in unity was once established, it was easy to ad- 
mit a trinity. 

Now, we may freely admit that in several places, represented by Ps. 
cxxxix : 7, the word Spirit is a mere parallelism to express God's 
self. We may freely admit that were there no passages, except those 
in which the Holy Ghost is said to be shed forth, as in Is. xxxii : 15, 
it would not be proved that it might not mean only God's influences. 
But there are many others ^which admit of no such explanation, a.) 
A number of personal acts are attributed to the Holy Ghost as creation. 
Gen. i: 2; Ps. civ: 30, the Generation of Christ's body and soul. 
Matt, i; 18; Luke i : 35. Teaching and revealing. Jno. xiv; 26; 
xv : 25, 26. Gal. iv : 6 : Rom. viii : 16 ; 1 Tim. iv : 1 ; 1 Pet. i : 1 1 ; 
2 Pet. i.: 21 ; Is. xi : 2, 3. To search the decree of God, 1 Cor. ii : 10. 
To set apart to the mini try, Is. lxi : 1 ; Acts xiii : 2; xx ; 28. To in- 
tercede, par akletos, Jno. xvi : 7; Rom. viii; 27. To have volitions. 
1 Cor. xii : 11. To regenerate and sanctify, Jno. iii : 6 ; 2 Cor. iii : 6 ; 
Eph. ii : 22, &c. Add here, as showing the personal agencies of the 
Holy Ghost, Luke xii : 12; Acts v : 32; xv : 28; xvi: 6; xxviii : 25; 
Rom. xv : 16 ; 1 Cor. ii : 13 ; Heb. ii : 4 ; iii : 7. 

b.) The Holy Ghost is said to exercise the active feelings of a per- 
son ; to be tempted, Acts v: 9; to be vexed, Is. lxiii : 10; to be 
grieved, Eph. iv : 30. 

No prosopopoeia here. — But here we must meet the well known 
evasion of the Socinian, who pleads that these are but instances of the 
trope of Impersonation, like those of Bom. vii : 11; iii: 19; 1 Cor. 
xiii: 7; Gen. iv : 10; Heb. xii: 24. We will not plead, with Tur- 
rettin, that the explanation is inapplicable to the Holy Ghost; because 
impersonations are usually of things corporeal and inanimate, as 
when the blood of" Abel cried, &c; for the case of 1 Cor. xiii: 7, 
proves that the Scripture does not limit the figure to this class of ob- 
jects, but sometimes impersonates abstractions. The true answers are, 
that the Socinian explanation is inapplicable, because no candid writer 
uses an impersonation, without placing something in his context, or 
afterwards dropping the figure, so as to show unmistakably to the rea- 
der, that he meant only an impersonation. The force of this is only 
seen when the reader gathers the multitude of places in the Scriptures, 
where such language prevails, speaking of the Holy Ghost as though 
He were a person ; and when he finds the utter absence of the proper 
qualification, b.) The explanation is impossible, because in a multi- 
tude of places the Holy Ghost is distinguished from the Godhead, 
whose impersonated attribute He would be on this supposition ; e. g., 
when it is said, "charity suffereth long and is kind," the only possible 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 12V 

meaning is, that the charitable man does so. When it is said God's 
Spirit will guide us into all truth, if the figure of impersonation were 
there, the meaning would be, that God, who is spiritual, will guide 
us. But in the very passage the spirit that guides is distinguished from 
God. " Whatsoever he shall hear, (i. e., from Father and Son,) that 
shall he speak." This leads us to argue : 

c.) That the Holy Ghost must be a Person, because distinguished so 
clearly from the Father, whose quality or influence He would be if He 
were an abstraction ; and farther, because distinguished in some places 
alike from the Father and Son ; e. g., He is sent by botb. Jno. xiv : 
16; xv: 26; xvi : 7. The pneuma, though neuter, is construed with 
the masculine pronouns. Jno. xvi : 13; Eph. i: 13, 14. He concurs 
with the Father, and Son, in acts or honours which are to them un- 
doubtedly personal : and, hence to Him likewise. Matt, xxviii : 19 ; 
2 Cor. xiii : 14. 

d.) His presence is represented by visible symbols, a thing which is 
never done for a mere abstraction elsewhere in Scripture, and is, in- 
deed, logically preposterous. For the propriety of the material sym- 
bol depends wholly on some metaphorical resemblance between the 
accidents of the matter, and the attributes of the Being symbolized ; 
e. g., Shekinah represents God ; its brightness represents His glory. 
Its purity — His holiness. Its fierce heat — His jealousy, &c, &c, Now, 
if the dove, Matt, iii : 16, and the fiery tongues, Acts ii : 3, symbolize 
the Holy Ghost, and He an abstraction, the analogy has to be sought 
between the accidents or qualities of the dove and the fire, and the 
attributes of an abstraction! (Quid rides.) But moreover, in Matt. 
iii : 16, the three persons all attest their presence at once — the Father, 
in His voice from heaven ; the Son, in His human person ; the Spirit, 
in the descending dove. Here, surely, the dove does not personate an 
abstract attribute of the Father or Son, for this would be to personate 
them as possessing that attribute. But they, at the moment, had their 
distinct personal representation. 

e.) The personality of the Holy Ghost is most plainly implied in the 
act of sinning against Him, committed by Ananias. Acts v : 3. Is- 
rael, Is. lxiii : 10; the Pharisees, Matt, .xii ; 31, 32. Some one may 
say: that 1 Tim. vi : 1, speaks of the sin of blasphemy against God's 
word and doctrine. Such an explanation is impossible in the above 
cases: and especially in Matt, xii : 31, 32. For if the Holy Ghost 
only represents an attribute of God, then to blaspheme that attribute is 
simply to blaspheme God. But in this case, the acts of blaspheming 
/the Father and Son, is expressly distinguished from that of blasphe- 
ming the Holy Ghost, and have different grades of guilt assigned them. 

f.) It is also implied that the Holy Ghost is a Person, by the dis- 
tinction made between Him and His gifts. 1 Cor. xii : 4 and 8. If 
the Holy Ghost were an influence, or exertion of God's power on the 
creature, as He must be held to be in these places, by Socinians, then 
He would be virtually here, the gift of a gift ! This leads us to notice 
a class of texts, in which the Socinian explanation appears supremely 
ridiculous ; it is those in which the Holy Ghost is distinguished from 
the power of God. Now, if He be but a name for God's influences 
and energies upon the souls of men, the general word power, (dunamis) 
ought to represent the idea of Him with substantial correctness. 



128 SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 

Then, when Luke iv ; 14 says: Christ returned from the desert to Gal- 
ilee "in the power of the Spirit," it is equivalent to: "In the power 
of the power." Acts i : 8. " But ye shall receive power, after that 
the holy power is come upon you." 1 Cor. ii : 4. " And my speech and 
my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in 
demonstration of the power, and of power." Also Acts x : 38 ; 
Rom. xv: 13, 19. 

The Holy Ghost then, is not an abstraction, nor an influence merely, 
but a Person, in the full sense in which that word is applied to the 
Father and Son, possessing will and active principles, intelligence, and 
action. 

3. This Person is Divine. — The next step is to prove His proper 
divinity; and this has now become comparatively easy. We follow the 
familiar order, showing that He has in Scripture the names, attributes, 
works, and worship of God. The principles upon which the argument 
proceeds, a're the same already unfolded in the argument for the divin- 
ity of Christ, a.) We find Jehovah applied to the Spirit, by compar- 
ing Exod. xvii : 7, with Heb. iii : 9 ; 2 Sam. xxiii : 2, Is. vi : 9, with 
Act, xxviii : 25; possibly Jer. xxxi : 31, compared with Heb. x: 15. 
The name God, is by plain implication ascribed to Him in Acts v: 3, 
4, &c, and 1 Cor. iii: 16, with vi : 19. The name Highest, seems to 
be given Him in Luke i: 35. b.) The attributes are ascribed to Him, 
as omnipresence implied by, (1 Cor. iii : 13,) and by the promises of the 
Holy Ghost to an innumerable multitude of Christians at once. Om- 
niscience, 1 Cor. ii : 10, with v. 11 ; omnipresence, 1 Cor. xii : 13. The 
same thing appears from His agency in inspiration and prophecy. Jno. 
xvi : 13; 2 Pet. i: 21. Sovereignty, 1 Cor. xii: 11. c.) The works 
of God, as of creation, Gen. i: 2. Preservation, Ps. civ: 30. Mira- 
cles, Matt, xii: 28; 1 Cor. xii: 4. Regeneration and sanctification, 
Jno. iii : 5 : 1 Cor. vi : 11; 2 Toess. ii : 13; 1 Pet. i: 2. Resurrec- 
tion of the dead, Rom. viii : 11. d.) The worship of God is also at- 
tributed to Him, in the formula of Baptism, the Apostolic benediction, 
and the prayer of Rev. i : 4. Other passages cited seem to me of very 
questionable application. 

Objections answered. — Against the Spirit's personality, it has been 
urged that it is preposterous to speak of a Person as shed forth, poured 
out; as constituting the material of an anointing, as in 1 Jno. ii : 27; 
whereas, if the Holy Ghost is understood as only a name for God's in- 
fluences, the figure is proper. The answer is, that the Holy Spirit's 
gifts are meant, when the giver is named, a most common and natural 
metonymy. The expressions are surely no harder to reconcile, than 
those of " putting on Christ," to be baptized into Christ. Eph. v : 
30; Rom.xiii; 14; Gal. iii: 27. 

To the proper divinity of the Holy Ghost it has been objected, that 
He is evidently subordinate, inasmuch as He is sent by the Father and 
the Son, and is limited in His messages by what they commit to Him. 
John xvi : 7,13. The obvious answer is, that this subordination is 
only economical, relating to the official work to which the Divine Spirit 
condescends for man's redemption, and it no more proves His inferior- 
ity, than the humiliation of the Son His. 

4. History of Question of Procession. — The Nicene Creed, a9 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 129 

settled A. D. 381, by the Council of Constantinople, had stated that 
the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father, saying nothing of any pro- 
cession from the Son. But the Western Doctors, especially Augustine, 
leaned more and more towards the view, that His personal relation 
connected Him in the same inscrutable way, with the Father and the 
Son. As the Arian Christians of the Gothic nations, who had occu- 
pied the Western provinces of the empire, began to come into the Or- 
thodox Catholic Church, it was judged more important, to assert the 
procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son equally with the Father, in 
order to eradicate any lingering ideas of a subordination of substance 
in the Son, which converts from Arianism might be supposed to feel. 
Hence, we are told, a provincial council in Toledo, A. D. 458, first 
enacted that the Latin form of the creed should receive the addition 
of the words, filioque. But this, although popular in Spain and France, 
was not adopted in Rome, even so late as A. B. 809, when Charle- 
magne endeavoured in vain to secure its adoption by the Bishop of 
Rome. But the Latin Christians were continually using it more exten- 
sively, to the indignation of the Greeks. This addition, as yet unwar- 
ranted, was the bone of contention (along with others,) throughout the 
9th and subsequent centuries. The Latin Primate seems to have sanc- 
tioned the addition to the creed, about the 11th century, under the 
urgency of the celebrated Father, Vincentius of Lerins. In the great 
Council of Lyons, A. B. 1274, the Greeks, eager for a compromise, on 
account of the pressure of the Mohammedans, submitted to the Latin 
doctrine. But they soon returned to their old views with new violence. 
Again, in 1439, the kingdom of Constantinople, then tottering to its 
fall, submitted to a partial compremis3, m order to secure Western sup- 
port; and it was agreed in the Council of Florence (adjourned to Pisa,) 
that it should be said : the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father 
through the Son. But even this, the Greeks soon repudiated; and 
both parties have returned, ever since, to their opposition. 

Argument Inconclusive. — To the dispassionate . mind, the dispute 
cannot but appear of small importance, and the grounds of both par- 
ties uncertain. The basis on which the idea itself of an eternal and 
necessarv relation of procession rests, seems to me scarcely sufficiently 
solid without the analogy of the Son. It is composed of the facts that 
the Holy Ghost is called the Spirit, (Pneuma,) of the Father, (from 
pnea,) and that in one solitary passage, (John, xv : 26,) it is said, 
He "proceedeth from the Father." All parties admit, that if there is 
such an eternal relation as procession, it is inscrutable. On the one 
hand, the Greeks rely on the fact that He is never said to proceed from 
the Son ; and on the ancient view of the Greek scholastic fathers, that 
the Father alone is the arche, or pege theou. On the other hand, the 
Latins urge, that the Holy Ghost is stated to be related to the Son, in 
the Scriptures, in every way, except procession, just as He is to the 
Father. He is the "Spirit of the Son," as well as the Spirit of the 
Father, (and they suppose the very name Spirit, expresses His eternal 
relation as much as the word procession.) He is sent by the Son, and 
He is sent by the Father ; He shows the things of the Son as much as 
those of the Father: for Christ says, (John xvi : 15,) "All things that 
the Father hath are mine." But as Dick well observes : unless it can be 
proved that spiration, mission, and speaking the things of Christ, ex- 



130 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

haust the whole meaning of procession, the demonstration is not com- 
plete. And since the whole meaning of procession is not intelligible 
to human minds, that equality of meaning cannot be known, except by 
an express assertion of God Himself. Such an express word we lack ; 
and hence, it appears to me, that this is a subject on which we should 
not dogmatize. Enough for us to know the blessed truth, that under 
the Covenant of Grace, the Divine Spirit condescends economically to 
commit the dispensation of His saving influences to the Son as our 
king, and to come at His bidding, according to the agreement, to sub- 
due, sanctify, and save us. It may be said, that, as there is a peculiar 
point of view, from which the grace, condescension and m.ijesty of both 
the other persons are especially displayed, calling for our gratitude and 
reverence, so the same thing is true of the Holy Ghost. The Father 
condescends, in giving his Son. The Son is assuming our nature and 
guilt, and the Spirit in making His immediate abiding place in our guilty 
breasts, and there purging out the depravity, which His majesty and 
justice, as very God, would rather prompt Him to avenge. 

5. Divinity of 2nd and 3d Persons proved by offices in redemp- 
tion. — The nature of the offices performed by the 2nd and 3d persons 
in redemption, imply and demand a proper divinity. This argument 
will require us to anticipate some truths concerning the mediatorial 
offices, and the doctrines of redemption; but I trust that sufficient gen- 
eral knowledge exists in all well-informed young Christians, to make 
the discussion intelligible to them. This argument is peculiarly im- 
portant and interesting, although too little urged by theologians, an- 
cient or modern. It shows that this high mystery of the Trinity has 
a most extensive practical aspect ; and that the scheme of the Socinian 
not only impugns a mystery, but makes havoc of the Christian's most 
practical hopes. 

Christ performs the work of our redemption in three offices, as prophet, 
priest, and king. The offices of the Holy Ghost, in applying redemp- 
tion, connect themselves with the first in enlightening and guiding us, 
and with the third in converting us. I shall, therefore, couple the evi- 
dences of His divinity from those two offices, with what I have to say of 
the Son's under the same heads. 

Christ and Holy Ghost, as Guides, must be Divine. — a.) Christ 
and His Spirit cannot be the sufficient guides of an immortal spirit, unless 
they have a truly infinite understanding. If our view be limited only 
to the preparation of a Bible for us, and all the constant, varied, end- 
less, inward guidance be left out of view, then the wonder would be, 
how one moderate volume could be made to contain principles sufficient 
for an infinite diversity of applications. No human book does this. 
To draw up, select topics for, digest such a code, required omniscience. 

But this is not all. We have daily inward guidance, by the Holy 
Ghost and providences applying the word. Now, so endlessly diversified 
and novel are the exigencies of any one soul, and so eternal and infinite 
the consequences connected it may be, with any one act, that it 
requires an infinite understanding to lead one soul, infallibly, through 
its mortal life, in such a way as to ensure safe consequences to all eter- 
nity. How much more to lead all Christians at once? 

But this is not all. Saints will be under duty in heaven. They will 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 131 

be finite and fallible, though holy and wise. The number and diversity 
of moral exigencies to which each soul will be subjected in his immor- 
tality, becomes infinite. Hence, if He had only a finite wisdom to 
meet them, however high, the probability would at last become violent, 
that His wisdom would be inadequate, and he would err and fall. 
But Christ continues head of His people forever. 

Christ, as Priest, must be Divine. — b.) As Priest, Christ must be 
divine. First : Unless above law, He could have no imputable active 
obedience. Second : Unless sustained by omnipotence, He could not 
have sustained the wrath of God for the sins of the world ; and unless 
of infinite dignity, His atonement by a few years' suffering would not 
have been of worth enough to satisfy the law. Tbird : After the sacri- 
fice comes intercession ; and unless He had an infinite understanding, 
sleepless attention, and omnipresence, He could not attend to the peti- 
tions of so many at the same time. Here see how worthless are Popish 
intercessors. 

Our King must be Divine. — c.) Christ, through His Holy Ghost, be- 
gins His kingly work with us, by " subduing us unto Himself." This is 
effected in the work of regeneration. Now we shall see, when we dis- 
cuss effectual calling, that this is a directly almighty work. Our sanc- 
tification also demands omniscience. For be who would cure the ulcer, 
must probe it; but the heart is deceitful beyond all created ken. If 
the Holy Ghost, who is the practical, indwelling agent of these works, 
is a creature, then we have but a creature-redemption, no matter how 
divine the Beings that send Him. For the channel of communication 
to our souls being finite, the communications would be limited. If you 
have the whole Atlantic Ocean connected with your resorvoir by an 
inch pipe, you can draw but an inch of water at once. The vastness 
of the source does you no good, beyond the calibre of the connecting 
pipe. 

Moreover, Christ has all poioer committed to His hand, for the 
church's good. It requires omniscience to comprehend this, and om- 
nipotence to wield it. See Rom. viii : 38, 39 ; Eph. vi : 12. 

In fine, all is enhanced, when we remember that our stake is the soul, 
our all, whose loss is irreparable. There is no comfort unless we have 
an infallible dependence. 



LECTURE XVII. 



SYLLABUS. 
PERSONAL DISTINCTIONS IN THE TRINITY. 

1. State the opinions of the Socinians, the Ariana, and the Orthodox, con- 
cerning the generation and filiation of the Son. 

Turrettin, Loc. iii, que. 27 and 29. Hill's Divinity, Bk. iii, ch. 10, § 3, 4. 
Pick, Lect. 29. Knapp, Sec. xliii. 



132 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

2. What were the opinions of the anti-Nicene Fathers, concerning the sufc 
ordination of the 2d and 3d Persons, the three-fold generation of the 
Son, and the distinction of Logos endiathetos, and Logos Pkophorikos. 
The same citations. Knapp, Lect. xlii. Neander. 

3. Prove the eternal generation of the Son ; refute the common objections, and 
overthrow the Socinian and Arian explanations thereof. 

Same citations. Watson's Theol. Inst., pt. ii, ch. xii, § v. 

4. What is the difference between the generation of the Son , and the Pro- 
cession of the Spirit? Can the latter be proved eternal ? 

Same citations. 

I. The discussions and definitions of the more formal and scholastic 
Theologians, concerning the personal distinctions in the Godhead, have 
always seemed to me to present a striking instance of the reluctance 
of the human mind to confess its own weakness. For, let any one read 
them with the closest attention, and he will perceive that he has ac- 
quired little more than a set of terms, whose abstruseness serves to 
conceal from him their practical lack of meaning, It is debated 
whether the personal distinction is real, or formal, or virtual, or •per- 
sonal, or modal. Turrettin decides that it may best be called modal — 
i. e., as a distinction in the modus subsistendi. But what that mode of 
subsistence is, remains none the less inscrutable ; and the chief reason 
why the term modal is least objectionable, seems to be that it is most 
general. After all, the mind must be content with these facts, the 
truth of which it may apprehend, although their full meaning cannot 
be comprebened by us; that there is an eternal and necessary distinc- 
tion between the essence and the persons, the former being absolute, 
and the latter relative ; that the whole essence is truly in each person, 
with all its attributes ; that yet the essence is not divided or distri- 
buted between them, but single and indivisible ; that the distinction 
of persons is one truly subsisting, subsisting eternally by the very ne- 
cessity of the divine nature, and not merely relative to our apprehen- 
sions of it ; and that the persons are not convertible the one into the 
other, nor the properties of the one predicable of another. 

Personal Properties. — Each Person has its peculiar property, 
which is not indeed constitutive of, but distinctive of it. The pro- 
perty of the Father is to be unbegotten ; of the Son, generation ; and of 
the Spirit, procession. Hence, three characteristic relations — in the 
Father, paternity ; in the Son, filiation ; and in the Holy Grhost, spira- 
tion. That there are such properties and relations we know ; lohat they 
are, we do not know. 

2. Order of the Persons. — We find ourselves speaking almost in- 
evitably of 1st, 2d, and 3d persons ; thus implying some order in the 
persons. ^ No orthordox Christian, of course, understands this order 
as relating to a priority of time, or of essential dignity. To what, 
then, does it relate 1 And is there any substantial reason for 
assigning such an order at all? We reply : There must be ; when we 
find that where the three persons are mentioned by Scripture, in con- 
nexion, as in Matt, xxviii : 19, &c, &c, they are usually mentioned as 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and not in reversed order ; that in all 
allusions to the properties and relations of the three, the Father is 
always spoken of (e. g., the word Father) by some term or trait implying 



OF LECTURES IK THEOLOGY. 13S 

primary rank, and the other two, by some implying secondariness ; as 
Christ is His Son, the Holy Gkost His Spirit ; they are sent, He the 
Sender; and in their working, there is always a sort of reference ts> 
the Father's primariness, (if I may coin a word,) as directing their 
operation. See also Jno. v : 26 ; x : 38 ; xiv : 11; xvii : 21; Heb. 
i: 3. 

View of Greek Fathers thereon. — But if it be asked, what is 
this primariness, the answer is not so easy. It was the usual answer 
of the ante-Nicene, and especially the Greek Fathers, that it indicated 
the order of derivation, that the personality of the Son is from that 
of the Father, not the Father's from the Son ; and so of the Holy Ghost. 
(And so far it must be allowed, the fair force of the Scripture facts 
just stated, carries them properly enough.) The Father they regarded 
as anaitios, as pege theou, or arche theou, the Son and Holy Ghost as 
aitiatoi, as theoi ek theou, and as deriving their personal subsistence 
from the eternal act of the Father in communicating the divine essence 
to them in those modes of subsistence. And this view was embodied 
in both forms of the Nicene Creed ; of A. D. 325 and 381, where the 
Son is called "God of God, Light of Light, and very God of very 
God ;" language never applied to the Father as to the Son. Their 
idea is, that the Father, the original G-odhead, eternally generates 
the person, not the substance of the Son, and produces by procession 
the person, not the substance of the Holy Ghost, by inscrutably com- 
municating the whole indivisible divine substance, essentially iden- 
tical with Himself, in these two modes of subsistence ; thus eternally 
causing the two persons, by causing the two additional modes of sub- 
sistence. This statement, they suppose, was virtually implied in the 
very relation of terms, Father and His San, Father and His Pneujma 
by the primariness of order always assigned to the Father, and by the 
distinction in the order of working. And they relied upon this view 
to vindicate the doctrine of the Trinity from the charge of tritheism. 
You will probably think, with me, that its value for this last purpose 
is questionable, for this reason : that the modes of subsistence of the 
persons being wholly inscrutable, the true answer to the charge of tri- 
theism is to be found for our minds, in that fact, coupled with the 
Scriptural affirmation that God is one as truly as the persons are three. 
Hence, no explanation of the derivation of one subsistence from another 
really brings us any nearer to the secret, How it is one and three. But 
the answers, which the advocates of this Patristic view presented to ob- 
jections, seem to my mind much more consistent than Dick would inti- 
mate. Was it objected, that they represented the 2d and 3d persons as 
beginning to exist, and thus robbed them of a true self-existence and 
eternity? These Fathers could answer with justice : No ; the processes 
of personal derivation were eternal immanent processes, and the Father 
has a personal priority, not in time, but only in causation ; e. g., the 
sun's rays have existed precisely as long as He has ; yet the rays are 
from the sun, not the sun from the rays. And the 2d person may be 
derived as to His personality, theos ek theou, and yet self-existent 
God ; because His essence is the one self-existent essence, and it is only 
His personality which is derived. They regard self-existence as an 
attribute of essence, not of person. Was it objected that these derived 
personalities were unequal to the 1st person? 



134 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

because the Father put His whole essence in the two other modes of 
subsistence. Was it said, that then the personal subsistence of the 2d 
and 3d was dependent on the good pleasure of the 1st, and therefore 
revocable at His pleasure? They answered, that the generation and 
procession were not free, contingent acts, but necessary and essential 
acts, free indeed, yet necessitated by the very nature of the eternal 
substance. You will perceive that I have not used the word subordi- 
nation, but derivation, to express this personal relation. If you ask 
me whether I adopt the Patristic view, thus cleared, as my own, I re- 
ply, that there seems to me nothing in it inconsistent with revealed 
truth ; yet it seems to me rather a rational explanation of revealed 
facts, than a revealed fact itself. On such a subject, therefore, none 
should dogmatize. 

Logos endiathetos, &c. — It may be well to explain, also, how the 
Rationalizing Fathers connected their theory of the Trinity with this 
generation of the Son. Attempting to comprehend the Divine essence, 
through the analogy of the human spirit, and according to the Platonic 
metaphysics, they said that the Son, or Logos, is God's Reason, or in- 
tellective action ; and the Holy Ghost His PsucHE,or emotive and vital 
activity. In the ages of eternity the Son was the Logos endiathetos 
or Ratio incita, God's reason acting only by self-comprehension, ac- 
cording to Prov. viii : 22; Jno. i: 2. When, in time, God began to 
effectuate His decree in works of creation and providence, He became 
the Logos prophorikos, or ratio prolata. When at length He was born 
of the flesh for man's redemption, He became the Logos ensarkikos, 
incarnate. Hence, the Father may be said to have made three pro- 
ductions of the Son — one from eternity, one when, in time, the Sou 
was sent out as Agent of God's working, one when He was born of the 
Virgin. 

3. Is Christ's Generation eternal. — This is the transition point, to 
enable us to comprehend the views of the Arians concerning Christ's 
generation. These heretics usually admitted the justice of the meta- 
physical explanation of God's immanent acts. But, said they, as the 
human mind has not one, but a numerous series of acts of intellection, 
noemata,so, a fortiori, the infinite mind of God. There is, of course, 
some primary noema, and this is the eternal, immanent logos of Jno. 
i: 2. There are other noemata in the divine mind, and some one of 
these is the one embodied, in time, in the creation of the Son, " by 
whom He made the worlds." Thus they endeavoured to reconcile the 
creation of the Son out of nothing, with the eternity of a logos. How 
worthless all this is, L need not say. 

Scripture language thereon. — The Arians, like all -others, hete- 
rodox and orthodox, find in the Scriptures ascriptions of a peculiar 
Sonship of Christ, needing some explanation. And we might as well 
array the more general of these Scripture representations here, as at a 
later stage of the discussion. I shall then pursue the method of bring- 
ing the several explanations of the Arian, Socinian, and orthodox, to 
the test of these Scriptures. The Messiah is called the Son of God, 
directly or indirectly, once in the ©Id Testament, and about one hun- 
dred and sixteen times in the New Testament ; while no creature is 
ever called the son of God, in the singular number, except Adam. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 135 

Luke iii : 38. And there the peculiarity is accounted for by the fact 
that it was the Evangelist's purpose to show that Adam, like Christ, 
had no human father. Christ is God's beloved Son. Matt, iii : 17; 
xvii : 5; Mark i : 11, &c. He is the Son who alone knoweth the Fa- 
ther. Luke x : 22; Jno. x : 15; and who reveals Him. He claims 
God as " His own Father," in such a sense as to make the Jews be- 
lieve that He made Himself equal with God. Jno. v: 17-19. He is 
a Son to be honoured as the Father is. Jno. v: 23. He doeth what- 
ever He seeth the Father do. Jno. v : 19. He is one with the Father. 
Jno. x : 30. He is in the bosom of the Father, though incarnate. 
Jno. i : 18 ; and is the only begotten of the Father. Jno. i: 14; and 
prototokos pases ktiseos. Col. i: 13. Here, surely, is evi- 
dence of some peculiar relation other than that borne by God's rational, 
or even His holy creatures generally. 

Arian Exposition. — Now, says the Arian, this Divine Creature is 
called the Son, and only begotten, because He is the first Creature the 
Father ever produced out of nothing, and the only one whom He pro- 
duced immediately, by His own agency, all subsequent productions, 
including those of the Holy Ghost being through the agency of this 
Son. He is called Son, moreover, becaase He has received a peculiar 
adoption, is deputized God to other creatures, and a splendid creature 
image of the divine glory. He is also called Son, as being born by 
miraculous power of a virgin, and being constituted God's Messenger 
to fallen man. And last : He is Son, as being the Heir, by adoption, 
of God's throne, and glory. 

Socinian explanation. — The Socinian makes Jesus Christ only a 
holy man; and in his eyes His peculiar Sonship means nothing more 
than that He was born of a virgin without human father, that He was 
adopted by God, and endued with most eminent spiritual endowments, 
that He was sent forth as God's chosen mouth-piece to call a fallen race 
to repentence and obedience ; and that He received the privilege of an 
immediate glorification, including His resurrection, ascension, and ex- 
altation to God's throne. 

A peculiar view of some Trinitarians. — But among Trinitarians 
themselves there are some, who give to Christ's Sonship a merely tem- 
poral meaning. They believe that the 2d and the 3d persons are as 
truly divine as we do ; they believe with us, that there is a personal dis- 
tinction, which has been eternal ; but they do not believe that the 
terms generation and procession were ever intended by Scripture to 
express that eternal relation. On the contrary, they suppose that they 
merely denote the temporal functions which the persons assume for 
man's redemption. 

Socinian explanation fails. — Now, to begin with the lowest scheme, 
the Socinian: it utterly fails at the first blush of the contest. It does 
not explain why Christ is called the Son, while all other creatures are 
called sons in the plural only. It does not explain why He was the 
beloved Son, why He comprehended and revealed the Father, why He 
was of equal honour, and identical substance, rather than other holy 
creatures. It utterly fails to explain why He is only beg tten; for 
Adam was begotten by God's direct power, not only without father, 
but without mother. His endowments and His mission only differed 



136 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

in degree from those of other prophets, who were, therefore, in this 
sense, as truly son* as He. And last: His resurrection and glorifica- 
tion leave Him behind Enoch and Elijah, who were translated. 

Arian explanation fails. — The Arian scheme also fails to explain 
how His Sonship made Him one with the Father, and of equal honour; 
how it capacitates Him to be the revealer and image of the Father's 
person and glory in a manner generically different from all other crea- 
tures ; and how it proves Him only begotten. It leaves unsatisfied the 
declaration, that while they were ktisis, He was prototokos : and 
begotten before every creature ; so that He would be produced in a to- 
tally different way from, and produced before, the whole creature class 
to which, on their scheme, He belongs! And last, like the Socinian 
scheme, it leaves wholly unexplained how a creature (therefore finite) 
could be competent to the exercise of all the ivorks he seeth the Father 
do, and to a divine glorification. 

Only an eternal Generation meets the texts. — Against the 
third view I would urge the general force of the passages I collected 
above. It may at least be said, that if it was not intended to teach 
that the permanent personal distinction was that of filiation, the Scrip- 
tures have been singularly unfortunate. But I shall proceed to cite 
other authorities, which are more decisive of the point. In doing this 
I shall be also adding to the overthrow of the Arian and Socinian 
views, by an a fortiori argument. For if a scheme of temporal filiation 
coupled with the admission of a true and eternal, though unnamed, 
personal distinction, will not satisfy the meaning of the texts ; still 
less will the scheme of a temporal filiation which denies the eternity 
and divinity of the 2d person. 

Because Christ is Son, when sent. — a.) In a number of passages 
it is said, that God "sent." "gave," &c, His Son : e. g., Rom. viii : 
3. " G-od sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh," &c. 
So, Jno. iii : 16; 1 Jno. iii : 8; iv : 9; Gal. iv : 4; Acts iii : 26. 
Now, who would dream that when God says, "He sends the Son in 
the flesh," He was not His Son before, but was made such by the 
sending 1 

Son, when pre-existent. — b.) The three Old Testament passages, 
Ps. ii : 7 ; Prov. viii : 22, 23 ; Micah v : 2, are advanced with great 
subtlety and force by Turrettin. He favours, for the first, the inter- 
pretation of the "to-day" (" have I begotten thee,") as the punctum 
stans, or eternal now, of the divine decree. The great objection is, 
that the idiom and usage of the Psalms does not sustain it. It is 
better, with Calvin and Hengsteuberg, to understand the verb, "have 
begotten," according to a frequent Hebrew usage, as equivalent to, the 
manifestation, or declaration of His generation. This took place when 
Christ was revealed to His Church. The passage then does not prove, 
but reither does it disprove, the eternity of His generation. In this 
text, as well as Prov. viii : 22, 23, Turrettin argues the identity of the 
subject with Jesus Christ, with great force. In Micah v : 2 ; xxiv : 6, 
the application to Jesus Christ is indisputable, being fixed by Matt. 
ii : 6. The relevancy of the text to His eternal generation depends 
on two points — whether the phrase "going forth," motsaoth, means 
generation or production, or only manifestation in action; and whether 



OF LECTURES IN" THEOLOGY. 137 

the phrase "from of old, from days of forever" means eternity, or only 
antiquity. As to the former question, we are shut up to the first mean- 
ing of generation by the usage. (Gesenius giving only "origin, de- 
scent,") and by the consideration that Christ's manifestation in action 
has not been eternal. As to the second question, the sense of proper 
eternity is certainly the most natural. The only plausible rendering 
besides the one giving by Turrettin is the one hinted by Gesenius : 
("whose descent is from antiquity ; referring to the antiquity of Christ's 
human lineage.) And manifestly this gives to the noun the perverted 
sense of channels of descent instead of act of production, its proper 
meaning. 

Father is eternally Father. — c.) We find another argument for 
the eternal generation of the Son, in a number of passages, as the Bap- 
tismal formula ; the Apostolic benediction ; Matt, xi : 27 ; Luke x : 22 ; 
Jn. v : 22 ; x : 33-37; Rom. viii: 32; &c, &c. In all these cases the 
word Son is used in immediate connexion with the word Father, so 
that it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the one is reciprocal 
to the other. The Son is evidently Son in a sense answering to that in 
which the Father is Father. But do these passages permit us to be- 
lieve that the first Person here receives that term only because He has 
produced a human nature in which to clothe the Son, when the two first 
passages give an enumeration of the three divine Persons as making up 
the Godhead, presented in its most distinctive divine attitude, receiv- 
ing the highest acts of worship, and all the others bring to view acts 
in which the Father and Son mutually share essentially divine acts or 
honours'? It is plain that the paternity here means something charac- 
teristic and permanent ; so, then, does the filiation. 

Rom. i: 3, 4. — d.) In Rom. i : 3, 4 ; we read that the. "Son of God 
was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, declared with power 
(hoeisthentos) to be the Son of God according to the Spirit of Holi- 
ness," &c. Here we not only find the evidence of head a.) that the 
Son was made flesh, and so was Son before ; but the evident antithesis 
between the flesh and the Spirit of holiness, His divine nature compels 
us to read that His resurrection forcibly manifested Him to be God's 
Son as to his divine nature, even as he was David's as to his human. 
But if His filiation to God respects His divine nature, as contrasted with 
His human, the question is settled. 

Christ is Son when Creating. — e.) I may group together two very 
similar passages, Col. i : 14-17 ; and Heb. i ; 3-6. The Sonship is surely 
not merely the incarnation, when it is stated to be a begetting before 
every creature ! The Son as Son, and not as incarnate only, is repre- 
sented in both passages as performing divine functions, as representing 
the Father's nature and glory; whence we must infer that His Sonship 
is something belonging to His divinity, not His humanity merely. And 
in Heb, v : 5 and 6, the Apostle seem to aim explicitly to separate 
His Sonship from that of all others as divine and peculiar. 

Objections. — It has been supposed that the following texts were 
repugnant to our view, by showing that the filiation had a temporal 
origin in Christ's incarnation and exaltation as as a mediatorial Per- 
son : Matt, xvi : 16 ;Luke i : 35 ; Jno. i : 49 ; seem, it is said, to imply 
that His Sonship is nothing else than His Messsiahship, and in Jno. x 1 



138 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

35, 36; it is said, He states Himself to be Son. because sanctified and 
sent into the world by the Father. The answer is, that this argument 
confound the traits which define Him as Son with those which constitute 
Him the Son. To say that the Messiah, the Sent, is the one who is Son, 
is far short of saying that these offices make Him the Son. It is said 
that Acts xiii : 33 ; and Col. i : 18 refer the S nship to his resurrection, 
the former of these passages especially, citing Fs. ii : 7 in support of 
that view. I reply, that it is only a mistranslation which seems to make 
Acts xiii : 33 relate to Christ's resurrection at all. We should read, 
in that God hath set up (as Messiah) Jesus: as it is written in the 
2 Ps : "Thou art My Son : this day have I begotten Thee." Here we 
see a striking confirmation of the sense given above to this Ps. viz: 
that Christ's Sonship was declaratively manifested by His instalment as 
Messiah. In the Col. i : 18; Christ is said to be the prototOKOS ek 
TOX HEREON. But evidently the concluding words should explain 
the meaning: "That in all things He mi.ht have the pre-eminence," in 
the resurrection of New Testament Saints, as well as in an eternal 
generation. 

Once more it is clamed that Luke i : 35 ; plainly defines the incar, 
nation as the ground of the Smshi >. The simplest reply is tha- 
the divine nature compare Rom. i: 4;) was never born of the virgint 
but only the humanity. Tuis nat ire, thus united in the mediatorial 
Person, was called God's Sou, because of its miraculous generation, so 
that the whole mediatorial person, in both nat ures, might be Son ol 
God ; that which is eternal, eternally Son, and that which is temporal, 
temporally Son. 

General force of Words: Father — Son. — Tr fine, there is a gen- 
eral an.ument for the eternal generation of the Sou, in the simple fact 
that Scripture has chosen tiiis most simple and important pair or' words 
to express a relation between the first and second Pers »ns. There must 
have been a reason for the choice, there must be something correspond- 
ing to the well-known meaning of this pair of words, else eternal truth 
would not have employed them. That meaning must of course be com- 
patible with God's immateriality and eternity, and must be stripped of 
all the elements arising from man's corporeal and finite nature and 
temporal existence. It is not corporeal generation, nor generation in 
time; but after stripping it of all this, do we not inevitably get this, 
as the residuum of meaning, that the personal subsistence of the Son is 
derivative, though eternal, and constitutes His nature the same with the 
Father's ? 

Personal Relation of Holy Giio?t.~4. Tt is a remarkable fact, 
that while so many terms and traits belonging to generation are given io 
the 2d Person, not one of them is ever given in Scripture to the 3d. 
He is indeed "sent" as the Sou is "sent;" but this is in both cases, not 
the modal, but merely the official term. The nature of the 3d person- 
ality is always represented by the word "breath," and his production 
is only called a "proceeding out." The inference seems fair, that the 
mode of personal subsistence, and the personal relation is therefore 
different from that of the Son. IJut as both are inscrutable, we can- 
not telhin what they d ffer. S e Tmrettin, Locus 3, que. 31, § 3. 

Is it Eternal 1— The evidence for the eternity of this personal re- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 139 

lation between the Spirit and the other two Persons, is much more 
scanty than that for she eternity of the Son's filiation. In only one 
place Jno. xv : 2(3 is the Holy Ghost said to proc >ed from the Father. 
If that place stood alone, it could never be determined from it whether 
it was intended by our Saviour to define the mode of the eternal sub- 
sistence of the 3d person, or only to denote his official function in time. 
But beside the analogy of the Sm's re'ation, we may infer with rea- 
sonable certainty that it intends an eternal relation. As his generation 
is not a mere commissioning in time, so the Spirits' procession is not a 
mere sending or an office in time. Otherwise the symmetry of the doc- 
trine of the Trinity would be fatally broken, while the Scriptures hold 
out three co-ordinate Persons, eternally subsisting and related as Per- 
soas, inter se, we should be guilty of representing the 3d as bearing no 
permanent relation to the others. 



LECTUKE XVIIL 



SYLLABUS. 
DEGREE OP GOD. 

1. How do Theologians classify the acts of God ? 
Turrettin, Loc. iv, que 1. Dick. Lect. 34. 

2. What is God's Decree ? Wherein d fferent from Fate ? What is the dis- 
tinction between permissive ami efficacious ? 

Conf. of Faith, ch. iii, Turrettin, ubi -upra, and Loc. 6, que. 2, Dick, ubi 
supra, Caiv, Inst. Bk. iii, ch. 21. 

3. Establish the following properties of the decree, a) Unity, b) Eternity, c) 
Universality, embracing especially the future acts ot free agents, d) Efficiency, e) 
Absoluteness from conditions i) Freedom, and g) Wisdom. 

Ttirrett, Loc. iv, que. 2, 3 and 4, Hill Bk. iv, ch, 7, § 1-3. Dick, ubi supra. 
Watson's Tueo. Inst, c . 26, § i. Kna, p. Sect, xxxii. 

4. How may the objections be answered ; a) That the Decree destroys free 
a ency and responsibil.ty ; b) Supjr?edes the use of means, c) Makes God the 
author of Sin. 

Turrettin, as above, Dick, Lects. 34 and 35. 

I. God's acts classified. — Our study now leads us from the consid- 
eration of God's nature to His acts. Theologians have usually classi- 
fied them under three sorts. The 1st are God's immanent eternal acts, 
which are wholty subjective. These are the generation of the Son, and 
procession of the Holy Ghost. 2d, are God's immanent and eternal 
acts having reference to objects out of Himself. This class includes 
His decree; and unchangeable and eternal act of God never passing 
over so as to cease to be His act, yet being relative to His creation. 
3d, are God's transient acts towards the universe external to Himself, 
including all His works of creation and providence done in time. 

II. Decree Proved by God's Intelligence. — "The decrees of God 



140 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

are His eternal purpose according to the counsel of His will, whereby, 
for His own glory, He hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass." 

Nature and Revelation concur to teach us that God is a Being of infinite 
intelligence, and of will. The eternal object of his cognition, as we 
saw, when investigating His omniscience, is nothing less than the whole 
of the possible ; for the wisdom and selection displayed in the creation 
of the actual, show that there was more before the Divine Mind, than 
what was effectuated. But when we inquire for the ground of the dif- 
ference between God's natural and his voluntary knowledge, we find 
no other than His volition. That is, the only way in which any objects 
can by any possibility have passed from God's vision of the possible 
into His foreknowledge of the actual, is by His purposing to effectuate 
it. God's foreknowledge embraces every being and act that shall ever 
be, as is proved by reason and Scripture (Acts xv: 18 ; Is. xlii : 9 ; 
xlvi : 10.) Hence his purpose must be of the same extent. 

By His Power. — The same conclusion follows by a more popular rea- 
soning from God's power ; that power extends to all beings and events, and 
is the source of all existence. Now it is impossible for us to conceive 
how an intelligent Being can set about producing anything, save as He 
has the conception of the thing to be produced in His mind, and the in- 
tention to produce it in His will. Last of all can we attribute an un- 
intelligent and aimless working to God. But if He is concerned in the 
production of all things, and had an intelligent purpose with reference 
to all which he produced, thereis His decree ; and His perfections, as we 
shall see, forbid our imputing any beginning to it. So the sovereignty 
of God, which regulates all the universe, the doctrine of His provi- 
dence, so fully asserted in Scripture, and His concurring perfections of 
knowledge and wisdom, show that He must have a purpose as to all 
things. See Eph. i : 11; Ps. xxxiii : 11. Other passages, extending 
this purpose specifically to various departments of events, and especially 
to those concerning which the decree is most contested, will be cited in 
other connexions. These also are appropriate here. 

Is the Decree in God Essentially 1 — The question whether God's 
decrees abide in Him essentially or accidentally, is but the same with 
that which we saw raised concerning the simplicity of the divine essence. 
The scholastic divines, in order to defend their metaphysical notion of 
this, said that God knows, feels, wills, &c, by His essence, or that God's- 
knowledge is but His essence knowing, &c. As we then concluded con- 
cerning His knowledge, so I now say concerning his purpose. If it is 
meant that God's purpose is but God purposing, and as abstracted from 
Him, is but an abstraction, and not an existent thing, I fully concur. 
But in the same sense, the purpose of a human soul is but that soul 
purposing. The difference of the two cases is, that God's purpose is 
immanent and immutable, the mans 1 evauescent and mutable. To make 
the decree of God's essence in any other sense, is to give it essence ; to 
make it a mode of the divine subsistence. And this trenches hard by 
the awful verge of pantheism. For if the decree is but a mode of the 
divine subsistence, then its effectuation in the creature's existence must 
still have the same essence, and all creatures are but modes of God, 
and their acts of God's acts. The decrees are not accidents with God, 
in the sense that, being the result of God's immutable perfections, they 
cannot change nor fail, but are as permanent as God's essence. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 141 

Fate, What ? — The doctrine of God's decree has been often im- 
pugned as no better than the Stoic's Fate. The modern, and indeed, 
the ancient interpreters of their doctrine, differ as to their meaning. 
Some, as Seneca, seem to represent fate as no other than the intelligent, 
eternal purpose of the Almighty. But others describe it as a physical 
necessity, self-existent and immanent in the links of causation them- 
selves, by which effect is evolved out of cause according to a law eter- 
nally and necessarily existent in the Universe and all its parts. To 
this necessity Gods are as much subject as men. This definition is more 
probably the true one, because it agrees better with a pantheistic sys- 
tem, and such stoicism was. Now it is obvious, that this fate necessi- 
tates God as much as man, and that not by the influence of his own in- 
telligence and perfections, but by an influence physical and despotic. 
Whereas our view of God's purpose makes it His most free, sovereign, 
wise and holy act of choice. This fate is a blind necessity; God's de- 
cree is intelligent, just, wise and benevolent. Fate was a necessity 
destroying man's spontaneity. God's decree, in purposing to make and 
keep man a free agent, first produced and then protects the exercise 
of it. 

God's decree effective or permissive. — God's decree "foreordains 
whatsoever comes to pass ;" there was no event in the womb of the fu- 
ture, the futurition of which was not made certain to God by it. But 
we believe that this certainty is effectuated in different ways, accord- 
ing to the different natures of God's creatures. One class of effects 
God produces by His own immediate agency, (as creations, regenera- 
tions, inspirations,) and by physical causes, which are continually and 
immediately energized by His power. This latter subdivision is cov- 
ered by what we call the laws of material nature. As to these, God's 
purpose is called effective, because He Himself effects the results, with- 
out the agency of other intelligent agents. The other class of effects 
is, the spontaneous acts of rational free agents other than God. The 
being and powers of these are derived from and dependent on God. But 
3^et He has been pleased to bestow on them a spontaneity of choice, 
which makes them as truly agents, sources of self-determined force, in 
their little, dependent sphere of action, as though there were no sover- 
eign force over them. In my theory of the will, I admitted and claimed 
as a great truth of our consciousness, that man's action is spontaneous, 
that the soul is self determined (though not the faculty of willing) in 
all its free acts, that the whole fountain of the volition is in the soul 
itself; and that the external object of the action is but the occasional 
cause of volition, Yet these spontaneous acts God has some way of 
directing, (only partially known to us) and these are the objects of His 
permissive decide. By calling it permissive, we do not mean that their 
futurition is not certain to God ; or that He has not made it certain ; 
we mean that they are such acts as He efficiently brings about by 
simply leaving the spontaneity of other free agents to work of itself, under 
incitements, occasions, bounds and limitations, which His wisdom and 
power throw around. To this class may be attributed all the acts of 
rational free agents, except such as are evoked by God's own grace, and 
especially all their sinful acts. 

III. Properties — The decree a unit. — The properties of God's de" 



142 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

cree are, 1st Unity. It is one act of the divine miod ; and not many. This 
view is at least suggested by Scripture, which speak of it usually as a pro- 
thesis, a "purpose," a "counsel." It follows from the nature of G >d. As 
His natural knowledge is all immediate and cotemporaneous, not suc- 
cessive, like ours, and His comprehension of it all infinitely complete 
always, liis purpose founded thereon, must be a single, all-comprehen- 
sive and simultaneous act. Besides, the whole decree is eternal and 
immutable. All therefore must co-exist together always in God's 
mind. Last, God's plan is shown, in its effectuation, to be one; cause 
is linked with effect, and what was effect becomes cause ; and influences 
of -events on events interlace with each other, and descend in widening 
streams to subsequent events ; so that the whole complex result is inter- 
connected through every part. A.s astronomers suppose that the re- 
moval of one planet from our system would modify more or less the 
balance and orbits of all the rest, so the failure of one event in this 
plan would derange the whole, directly or indirectly. God's plan is, 
never to effectuate a result apart from,, but always by its own cause. 
As the plan is thus a unit in its effectuation, so it must have been in 
its conception. Most of the errors which have arisen in the doctrine 
have come from the mistake of imputing to God that apprehension of 
His purpose in successioe parts, to which the limitation of our minds 
confine us, in conceiving of it. 

The decree eternal — objections. — 2. The decree is eternal. One 
may object: that God must exist before His decree, the subject before 
its act. I reply, He exists before it only in the order of production, not 
in time. For intellection is His essential state, and His comprehension 
of His purpose may be as eternal as Himself. The sun's rays are from 
the sun, but measuring by duration, there were rays as early as there 
was a sun. It has been objected that some parts of the decree are con- 
sequent on other parts, and cannot therefore be equally early. I reply, 
the real sequence is only in the events as effectuated, not in the decree 
of them. The latter is a co-existent unit with God, and there is no 
sequence of parts in it, except to our feeble minds. It is said the com- 
prehension of the possible must have gone before in the divine mind, in 
order that the determination to effectuate that part which commended 
itself to the divine wisdom, might follow. I reply : God does need to 
learn things deductively, or to view them piecemeal and successively; 
but His infinite mind sees all by immediate intuition and together; and 
in seeing, concludes. The most plausible objection is, that many of 
God's purposes must have been formed in time, because suspended on 
the acts of other free agents to be done in time; e g., Deut. xxviii : 
2, 15 ; Jer xviii : 10. The answer is, that all these acts, though con- 
tingent to man, were certainly foreknown to God. 

A.RGUED FROM GOd's PERFECTIONS AND SCRIPTURE. Having tllUS 

cleared away objections, we might argue very simply: If God had an 
intention to act, before each ast, when was that intention born 1 No 
an-wer will be found tenable till we run back to eternity. For, God's 
knowledge was always perfect, so that He finds out nothing new, to become 
the occasion of a new pian. His wisdom was always perfect, to give Him 
the same guidance in selecting means and ends. His power was always 
infinite, to prevent any failure or successful resistance, which would 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 



143 



canse Him to report to new expedients. His character is immuta- 
ble ; so t n at He will not causelessly change His own mind. There is 
therefore nothing to account for any addition to his original plan. Bit 
we may reason more comprehensively. It is, as we saw, only God's 
purpose, which causes a part of the possible to become the actual. As 
the whole of God's scienila simplicis intellig nti.ae was present to Him 
from eternity, a, reason is utterly wanting in Him, why any part of the 
decree should be formed later than any other p;irt. 

And to this agree the Scriptures: Is. xlvi : 10; Matt, xxv : 34; 1 
Cor. ii : 7; Eph. i : 4; 2 Thess. ii : 13; 2 Tim.i: 9; 1 Pet. i : 20. 
On these, two remarks should be made. Although they do not ex- 
pressly assert the eternity of all God's decrees, several of thetn do as- 
sert the eternity of the very ones most impugned, His decrees concern- 
ing events dependent on free agent. In the language of Scripture, to 
say a thing was done "before the formation of the world," is to say it 
is from eterniy, beciuse with the creation of the universe, began suc- 
cessive duration. All before this is the measureless eternity. In con- 
clusion I add the express assertion of Acts xv : 18. 

The decree universal. — 3. The decree is universal, embracing ab- 
solutely all creatures, and all their action. No nominal Christians con- 
test this, except as to the acts of free agents, which the Armiuians, but 
especially the Socinians, exempted from God's sovereign decree, and 
the latter heretics from His foreknowledge. We have seen that Grod's 
foreknowledge is founded on His foreordination. If then we prove that 
God has a perfect foreknowledge ot all future events, we shall have 
virtually proved that He has foreordained them. The Socinians are 
more cousisient than the Arminians here, in that they deny both to God. 
They define God's omniscience as His knowledge of all the know Me. 
All the future acts ot free-agents, say they, cannot he foreknown, be- 
cause a multitude ot them are purely contingent ; the volitions spring- 
ing from a will in equilibria. It is therefore no derogation to God's 
understanding, that He does not foreknow all of them, any more than 
it would be to the gooduess of an eye, that it does not see what as yet 
does not exist. Wuen free agenrs perform acts unforeseen to God, 
His wisdom, say they, provides Him with a multitude of resource , by 
which he overrules the result, and still makes them concur substantially 
(not absolutely) with His wise and good plans. 

Includes the volitions of free agents. — .Now, in opposition to all 
this, we have shown that the future volitions of free agents are none 
of them among the unknowable ; because none contingent to God. We 
argue farther that God must have foreordained, and so foreknown all 
events, including these volitions: a.) Because, else, His providence 
would not be sovereign, and His independence, and omnipotence would 
be impugned. We have seen that the course of events is a chain, in 
whioh every link has a direct or remote connexiou with every other. 
Into a multitude ot physical events, the volitions of free agents enter 
as part causes; and if God had not a control over all these, he could not 
have over the dependent results. His government would be a capricious 
patchwork of new expedients. Because He could not control every- 
tning, He would not be absolutely sure of controlling anything, for all 
are niter-depeadent. b.) God's knowledge would receive continual 
accretions, uud hence His feelings and plans would change with them; 



144 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

His immutability would be gone, c.) Prophecy concerning the acts of 
free agents would have been impossible. For unless all the collateral 
links of causation are under God's control, it may be that He will be 
unable to control a single result. But a multitude of tbe acts of the 
proudest, most arrogant and rebellious men were exactly and confidently 
predicted, of your Nebuchadnezzars, Pharoahs, Cyrus, &c, &c. To 
this last agree the Scriptures : Eph. i : 10, 11 ; Bom. si : 33 ; Heb. iv : 
13; Bom. ix: 15,18; Acts xv : 18; xvii : 26; Job xiv : 5; Is. xlvi : 
10. men's volitions especially including the evil. Eph. ii ; 10; Acts 
ii : 23 ; iv : 27, 28 ; Ps. lxxvi ; 10 ; Prov. xvi : 4-33 ; Dan. iv : 34, 35 ; 
Gen. xlv: 5; Is. x : 5-15; Josh, xi : 20; Pro. xx : 24; Is. xlv : 7; 
Amos iii : G ; &c. Add all those texts where the universality of God's 
providential control is asserted : for Providence is but the execution of 
the decree. 

The decree efficient. — 4. Nearly akin to this is the remark that 
the decree is efficient. By this I mean that God's purpose is in every 
case absolutely sure to be effectuated. Nearly all the arguments ad- 
duced under the last head apply here : God's sovereignty, God's wis- 
dom, His independence, and the dependence of all other things on Him, 
the "immutability of His counsel," and of His knowledge and other at- 
tributes, the certainty of His predictions, all demand that "His counsel 
shall stand, and He shall do all His pleasure." See Matt, xxvi : 54; 
Luke xxii : 22 ; Acts iv : 28 ; Prov. xvi : 33 ; Matt, x : 29-30. Here 
we see that things most minute, most contingent in our view of them, 
and most voluntary are yet efficaciously produced by God. 

Over free agents also. — The Arminians have too much reverence 
for God's perfections to limit His knowledge as to the actions of free 
agents. But tbey endeavor to evade the inevitable conclusion of the 
decree, and to save their favorite doctrine of conditional purposes by 
limiting His concern with the acts, and especially sins, of free 
agents, to a mere foreknowledge, permission, and intention to make the 
permitted act a condition of some part of the decree. I urge that they 
who concede so much, cannot consistently stop there. If the sinful 
act (to take the strongest case against the Calvinist,) of the free agent 
has been from eternity certainly foreseen by God, then its occurrence 
must be certain. But in this universe nothing comes without a cause ; 
there must therefore be some ground for the certainty of its occurrence. 
And it is upon that ground that God's foreknowledge of it rests. Do 
you ask what that ground is 1 I reply by asking : How does God's 
knowledge of the possible pass into his knowledge of the actual? 
Only by His determining to secure the occurrence of all the latter. 
Conceive of God as just now about to create a free agent, ac- 
cording to His plan, and launch him out on his path of freedom. If 
God foreknows all that the free agent will choose to do, if created; 
does He not purpose the doing of all this when He creates Him?. To 
deny this is a contradiction. We may not be able to see fully how 
God certainly procures the doing of such acts by free agents, still leav- 
ing them to act purely from their own spontaneity : but we cannot deny 
that Ho does, without overthowing His sovereignty and foreknowledge. 
Such events may be wholly contingent to man ; but to God none of 
them can be contingent; else all the parts of His decree connected as 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 145 

effect with them as causes, would be in the same degree contingent. 
Thus God could scarcely have any eternal foreknowledge or decree at 
all, as to free agents or anything connected with them. 

5. The decree not conditional. — We are now prepared to approach 
the proposition, that God's act in forming His decree is unconditioned 
on anything to be done by His creatures. In another sense, a multitude 
of the things decreed are conditional ; God's whole plan is a wise unit, 
linking means with ends, and causes with effects. In regard to each of 
these effects, the occurrence of it is conditional on the presence of its 
cause, and is made so dependent by God's decree itself. But while the 
events decreed are conditional, God's act in forming the decree is not 
conditional, on anything which is to occur in time ; because in the case 
of each dependent event, His decree as much determined the occur- 
rence of the cause, as of its effect. And this is true equally of those 
events in His plan dependent on the free acts of free agents. No better 
illustration can be given, of the mode in which God decrees dependent or 
conditioned events, absolutely, by equally decreeing the conditions 
through which they are to be brought about, than Acts xxvii : 22 with 31. 
The Arminian admits that all such intermediate acts of men were eter- 
nally foreseen of God, and thus embraced in His plan as conditions : but 
not foreordained. We reply : if they were certainly foreseen, their 
occurrence was certain ; if this was certain, then there must have been 
something to determine that certainty ; and that something was either 
God's wise foreordination, or a blind physical fate. Let the Arminian 
choose. 

Bat the eternity of the decree already proved shows that its forma- 
tion did not depend on the creature ; for all that was conditional on 
His contingent act must have hung in suspense in God's mind until 
after the act occurred. Therefore, the condition never was contingent 
to God, i. e., as above explained, it was also Predetermined by the same 
decree. 

The immutability of God's decree argues the same, and in the same 
way. If the condition on which His results hung were truly contin- 
gent, then it might turn out in one or another of several different ways. 
Hence it would always be possible that God might have to change His 
plans. 

It is equally plain that His sovereignty would no longer be entire : 
but God would be dependent on His creatures for ability to effectuate 
many of His plans; and some might fail in spite of all He could do. I 
have already indicated that God's foreknowledge of the conditions, and 
of all dependent on them, could not possibly be certain. For if a thing 
is not certain to occur, a certain expectation that it will occur, is an 
erroneous one. Hence, the Arminian is driven by consistency to the 
impious conclusions of the Socinian, limiting God's knowledge. 

But Arminians are exceedingly fond of saying, that the dream of ab- 
solute decrees is a metaphysical invention not sustained, by Scripture, 
and only demanded by consistency with other unhallowed human spec- 
ulation. Hence I shall take pains, as on other points, to show that it 
is expressly the doctrine of Scripture. Here may be cited all the 
proofs by which I showed that the decree is universal and efficacious. 
For \he very conception of the matter which I have inculcated is, that 
evefits are conditioned on events, but that the decree is not, because it 



146 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

embraces the conditions as efficaciously as the results. See also Is, 
xlvi ; 10, 11 ; Rom. ix : 11 ; Matt, xi : 25, 26 ; Eph. i : 5 and 11 ; Is. 
xl : 13 ; Kom. ix : 15-18 : Acts ii : 23 ; iii : 18 ; Gen. 1 : 20. 

His decree includes means and conditions. 2 Thess. ii : 13; 1 Pet. 
i: 2: Eph. i: 4; Phil, ii : 13; Eph. ii : 8 ; 2 Tim. ii : 25. 

Does this make God the Author of sin 1 — But against this view 
objections are urged with great clamour and confidence. They may be 
summed up into two: that absolute decrees make God the author of 
of sin, and that the Scriptures contradict our view by displaying many 
conditional threats and promises of God, e. g., Ezek. xviii : 21; Ps. 
Ixxxi : 13, 14 ; &c, &c, and some cases in which decrees were actually 
revoked and changed in consequence of men's conduct, as 1 Sam. xiii : 
13 ; Luk. vii': 30. 

That God is not, and connot be the author of sin, is plain from ex- 
press Scripture, Jas. i; 13, 7; 1 Jno. i : 5; Eccl. vii: 29; Ps. xcii : 
15 ; from God's law, which prohibits all sin ; from the holiness of His 
nature, which is incapable of it; and from the nature of sin itself, 
which must be man's own free activity, or else is not responsible and 
guilty. But I remark, 1st, that so far as the great mystery of God's 
permission of sin enters into this objection, our minds are incapable of 
a complete explanation. But this incapacity is precisely the same, 
whatever scheme we adopt for accounting for it, unless we deny to God 
complete foreknowledge and power. 2. The simple fact that God 
clearly foresaw every sin the creature would commit, and yet created 
him, is attended with all the difficulty which attaches to our view. 
But that foresight the Arminian admits. By determining to create the 
creature, foreknowing that he would sin, God obviously determined the 
occurrence of the sin, through the creature's free agency ; for at least 
He could have refrained from creating him. But this is just as strong 
as our view of the case involves. The Arminian pleads : Yea, but God 
determined to create a creature who, He foresaw would sin, not for the 
sake of the sin, but for the sake of the good and holy ends connected 
there with. I reply, 3d. Well, the very same plea avails for us. We 
can say just as consistently : God purposed to produce these free agents, 
to sustain their free agency untrammeled, to surround them with out- 
ward circumstances of a given kind, to permit that free agency, moved 
by those circumstances as occasional causes, to exert itself in a multi- 
tude of acts, some sinful, not for the sake of the sin, but for the sake 
of some good and holy results which His infinite wisdom has seen best 
to connect therewith. Last, in the sinful act, the agency and choice is 
the sinner's alone ; because the inscrutable modes God has for effectu- 
ating the certain occurrence of His volitions never cramp or control the 
creatures spontaneity : as conciousness testifies. 

Objected that God's threats and promises are conditional. — 
The second class of objections Arminians also advance with great con- 
fidence ; saying that unless we are willing to charge God with insincer- 
ity, His conditional promise or threat must be received by us as an 
exact disclosure of His real 'purpose. Let us test this in any case, such 
as our adversaries usually select: e. g., Is. i : 19: "If ye be billing 
and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land." Did not God know, 
at the time He uttered these words that they would not be willin'gand 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 147 

obedient? See ch. vi : 10-12. Was it not His fixed intention, at that 
very moment to deprive them of the good of the land, in consequence 
of their clearly foreseen disobedience? Here then is the very same 
ground for the pretended charge of insincerity in God. The truth is, 
that God's preceptive threats and promises are not a disclosure of His 
secret purpose. But the distinction between His secret and revealed will, 
is one which is inevitably made by every thinking mind, and is absolutely 
unavoidable, unless man's mind can become as capacious as God's. 
And see Deut. xxix : 29. Nor does this impugn God's sincerity. The 
sophism of the Arminian is just that, in this case, already pointed out: 
counfounding conditionality of events decreed, with conditionality of 
God's decree. God purposed, in this case, that the event, Israel's pun- 
ishment, should be conditioned on the other event, their disobedience. 
So that His conditional promise was perfectly truthful. But He also 
purposed, secretly, to withhold that undeserved constraining grace, 
which might have prevented Israel's disobedience, so that the con- 
dition, and the thing conditioned on it should both come to pass. 
Again, the idea that God has revocable decrees, is as utterly incom- 
patible with the foreknowledge of man's free acts, as with their fore- 
ordination. When it said that the Pharisees rejected the counsel of God 
concerning themselves, the word counsel means but precept, cf. Ps. cvii : 
11; Prov. i: 25,30; Rev. iii : 18. 

The decree free. — 6. The freedom of God's decree follows from 
what has been already argued. If it was eternal, then, when it was 
formed, there was no Being outside of Himself to constrain or be the 
motive of it. If absolute, then God was induced to it by no act of 
other agents, but only by His own perfections. And this leads us to 
remark, that when we say the decree is free, we do not mean God's acts 
in forming; it, in disregard of His own perfections, but under the guid- 
ance of His own perfections alone. Ps. xv : 3 ; Eph. i : 5. 

7. The wisdom of God's decree is manifest from the wisdom of that 
part of His plan which has been unfolded. Although much there is 
inscrutable to us, we see enough to convince us that all is wise. Rom. 
xi : 33, 34. 

Does the decree supersede means? — IV. Of the general objec- 
tions against the decree of God, to which I called your attention, two 
remain to be noticed. One is, that if it were true, it would supersede 
the use of all means. "If what is to be will be, why trouble our- 
selves with the useless and vain attempt either to procure or prevent it ?" 

This popular objection is exceedingly shallow. The answer, is that 
the use of the means, where free agents are concerned, is just as much 
included in the decree, as the result. God's purpose to institute and 
sustain the laws of causa'tion in nature, is the very thing which gives 
efficacy to means, instead of taking it away. Further, both Scripture 
and consciousness tell us, that in using man's acts as means, God's in- 
finite skill does it always without marring His freedom in the least. 

Is it inconsistent with free agency ? — But it is objected, second, 
that if there were an absolute decree, man could not be free; and so, 
could not be responsible. But consciousness and God's word assure us 
we are free. I reply, the facts cannot be incompatible because Scripture 
most undoubtedly asserts both, and both together. See Is. x : 5 to 15 ; 



148 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Acts ii : 23. Second, Feeble man procures free acts from his fellow- 
man, by availing himself of the power of circumstances as inducements 
to his known dispositions, and yet he regards the agents as free and re- 
sponsible, and the agent so regards himself. If man can do this some- 
times, why may not an infinite God do it all the time 1 Third, If 
there is anything about absolute decrees to impinge upon man's freedom 
of choice, it must be in their mode of execution, for God's merely hav- 
ing such a purpose in His secret breast could affect man in no way. 
But Scripture and consciousness assure us that God executes this pur- 
pose as to man's acts, not against, but through and with man's own free 
will. In producing spiritually good acts, He "worketh in man to will 
and to do ;" and "makes him willing in the day of his power." And 
in bringing about bad acts, He simply leaves the sinner in circumstances 
such that he does, of himself only, yet cortainly, choose the wrong. 
Last, This objection implies that man's acts of choice could not be free, 
unless contingent and uncaused. But we have seen that this theory of 
the will is false, foolish, and especially destructive to rational liberty. 



LECTITEE XIX. 



SYLLABUS. 
PREDESTINATION. 

1. "Wherein are the terms Predestination and Election distinguished from God's 
Decree f What the usage and meaning of the original words, pkognosis ekloge 
and cognates ? 

Turret. Loc. iv, que. 7, Dick, Lect. 35, Conf. of F., ch. 3. 

2. Prove that there is a definite election of individual men to salvation, whose 
number can neither be increased nor diminished. 

Turret. Loc. iv, ques. 12, 16, Conf. of F., ch. 3. Calv. Inst. Bk. iii. chs. 
21, 22. Dick, Lect. 35. Hill's Div., Bk. iv, ch. 7. Burnet on 39 Articles. 
Art. xvii, Knapp, sect, xxxii. Watson's Theo. Inst., ch. xxvi, § 1, 2. 

3. Has the decree of predestination the qualities predicated of the whole 
decree. 

Dick, Lect. 35. 

4. Does predestination embrace angels as well* as men ; and with the same 
kind of Decree ? 

Turrottin, Loc. iv, que. S. 

5. State the differences between the Sublapsarian and Supralapsarian schemes. 
Which is correct ? 

Dick, Lect. 35. Turett. Loc. iv, ques. Oth, 14th and 18th, § 1-5. Burnet, 
as above. 

Definitions. — T. While God's decree is His purpose as to all things, 
His predestination may be defined to be His purpose concerning the ever- 
lasting destiny of His rational creatures. His election is His purpose 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. , 149 

of saving eternally some men and angels. Election and reprobation 
are both included in predestination. The word proortsmos, the proper 
original for predestination does not occur in this connexion in the 
New Testament, but the kindred verb and participle are found in the 
following passages, describing God's foreordination of the religious 
state or acts of persons : Acts iv : 28 : Rom. viii : 29, 30 ; Eph. i : 5 ; 
Luk. xxii : 22. That this predetermination of men's privileges and 
destinies by God includes the reprobation of the wicked, as well as the 
election of the saints, will be established more fully in the next lecture. 

The word prognosis progestosko, as applied to this subject, 
means more than a simple inactive cognition of the future state of men 
by God, a positive or active selection. This is proved by the Hebrais- 
tic usage of this class of words; as in 1 Thess. v : 12; Jno. x: 14; 
Ps. i : 6; 2Tim.ii: 19; and by the following passages, where the 
latter meaning is indisputable: Rom. xi : 2; 1 Pet. i : 20. This will 
appear extremely reasonable, when we remember that according to the 
order of God's acts. His foreknowledge is the effect of His foreordi- 
nation. 

Ekloge, eklego are used for various kinds of selection to office, 
&c, and once, by metonymy, for the body of Elect, Rom. xi : 7. 
When applied to God's call to religious privilege or to salvation, it is 
sometimes inclusive of effectual calling; as Jno. xv : 16, 19. Armin- 
ians would make this all of election : but that it means a prior and 
different selection is plain in Matt, xx : 16 ; 2 Thes. ii : 13. The words 
prothesis, Rom. viii: 28; ix : 11; Eph. i: 11; and tasso, Acts 
xiii : 48, very clearly express a foreordination of God as to man's re- 
ligious state. 

Propositions. — »II. "By the decree of God, for the manifestation of 
His own glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting 
life, and others foreordained to everlasting death." 

"These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are 
particularly and unchangeably designed ; and their number is so cer- 
tain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.." 

Predestination of men proved. From decree. — To discuss thi s 
thesis, first, as to men. I would argue first : From the general doc- 
trine of decrees. The decree is universal. If God has anything to 
do with the sinner's redemption, it must be embraced in that decree. 
But salvation is everywhere attributed to God, as His work. He calls. 
He justifies. He regenerates. lie keeps us by faith unto salvation. 
He sanctifies. All the arguments drawn from God's attributes of wis- 
dom, infinite knowledge, omnipotence, and immutability, in support of 
His eternal decree, show that His agency in saving the sinners who are 
saved, is a purposed one, and that this purpose is eternal. Ps. xxxiii : 
10: Numb, xxiii: 19; Mai. iii : 6; Jas. i : 17; Heb. vi : 17. 

Second. From original sin". — The same thing follows from what 
Scripture and observation teach us of the heart of all men. We are 
by nature ungodly, hostile to God, and His law, blind in mind, and 
certainly determined to worldliness in preference to godliness, by a 
native disposition. Hence, no man cometh to Christ, except the Father 
who hath sent Him draw him. Unless some power above man made 
the difference between the believer and unbeliever, it would never 



150 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

vitally appear. But if God makes it, He does it of purpose, and that 
purpose must be eternal. Hence, no intelligent mind which admits 
original sin, denies election. The two doctrines stand or fall together. 

Third. From scripture testimonies. — A number of passages of 
Scripture assert God's election of individuals, in language too clear to 
be evaded : Matt, xxiv ; 24 ; Jno. 15 : 16 ; Acts xiii : 48 ; Rom. viii : 
29, 30 ; ix : 11; xvi ; 22-24 ; xi : 5, 7 ; Eph. i : 4 ; v : 11; Phil, iv : 
3 ; 2 Tim. i : 9 ; 2 Tim. ii : 19. The most of these you will find com- 
mented on in your text boohs, in such a manner as effectually to clear 
them of the evasions of adversaries. Fourth, The Saints have their 
names "written in the book of life," or in "the Lamb's book," or "in 
Heaven." See Phil, iv : 3 ; Heb. xii : 23 ; Rev. xiii : 8. 

Predestination more th^n selection of a character to be fa- 
voured. — This class of passages is peculiarly convincing ; and especially 
against that phase of error, which makes God's election nothing else 
than a determination that whosoever believes and repents shall be saved, 
or in other words, .a selection of a certain quality or trait, as the one 
which procures for its possessors the favour of God. This feeble no- 
tion may be farther refuted by remarking that all the language em- 
ployed about predestination is personal, and the pronouns and other 
adjuncts indicate persons and not classes. It is "whom (masculine) He 
foreknew, them He also did predestinate." It is "As many as were or- 
dained to eternal life, believed," (masc.) Acts xiii : 48. Again ; a mere 
determination to bestow favour on the possessors of certain qualities, 
would be inert and passive as to the propagation of those qualities; 
whereas God's election propagates the very .qualities. See Rom. ix : 
11, 18, 22, 23 ; Eph. i : 4, 5 ; 2 Thess. ii : 13. "He hath chosen ws to 
salvation through, &c." And once more : were this determination to 
bestow favour on faith and penitence the whole of election, no one 
would ever possess those qualities ; for, as we have seen, all men's 
hearts are fully set in them to do evil, and would certainly continue im- 
penitent did not God, out of His gracious purpose, ejficaciously per- 
suade some to come to Him. These qualties which are thus supposed 
to be elected, are themselves the consequences of election^ 

Predestination proved by providence. — Fifth, A most convincing 
proof of a very practical nature may be derived from the observed 
course of God's providence. That providence determines sovereignly 
the metes and bounds of each man's outward privileges, of his life and 
opportunities. It determines whether he shall be born and live in a 
Pagan, or a Christian country, how long he shall enjoy means of grace, 
and of what efficacy, when and where he shall die. Now in deciding 
these things sovereignly, the salvation or loss of the man's soul is prac- 
tically decided, for without time, means, and opportunity, he will not 
be saved. This is peculiarly strong as to two classes, Pagans and in- 
fants. Arminians admit a sovereign election of nations in the aggre- 
gate to religious privileges, or rejection therefrom. But it is indispu- 
table that in so fixing their outward condition, the religious fate is vir- 
tually fixed forever. What chance has that man practically, for reach- 
ing Heaven, whom God caused to be born, to live, to die, in Tahiti in the 
Sixteenth century? Did not the casting of his lot there virtually fix 
his lot for eternity] In short, the sovereign election of aggregato na- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 151 

tions to privilege necessarily implies, with such a mind as God's, the 
intelligent and intentional decision of the fate of individuals, practi- 
cally fixed thereby. Is not God's mind infinite? Are not his percep- 
tions perfect 1 Does He like a feeble mortal, "shoot at the covey, with- 
out perceiving the individual birds V As to infants, Arminians believe 
that all such, which die in infancy, are redeemed. When, therefore, 
God's providence determines that a given human being shall die an in- 
fant, He infallibly determines its redemption, and in this case, at least, 
the decision cannot have been by foresight of faith, repentance, or 
good works ; because the little soul has none, until after its redemp- 
tion. This point is especially conclusive against the Arminian, because 
they are so positive that all who die in infancy are saved. 

Evasions of Rom. ix considered. — The declarations of the Holy 
Ghost in Rom. ix and xi are so decisive in our favour, that they must 
needs end the debate with all who revere the Divine authority, but for 
an evasion. The escape usually sought by Arminians (as by Watson, 
Inst.) is: That the Apostle in these places, teaches, not a personal 
election to salvation, but a national or aggregate election to privileges. 
My first and main objection to this is, that it is utterly irreconcileable 
with the scope of St. Paul in the passage. What is that scope 1 Obviously 
to defend his great proposition of "Justification by free grace through 
faith," common to Jew and Gentile, from a cavil which, from pharisaic 
view, was unanswerable, viz : "That if Paul's doctrine were true, then 
the covenant of election with Abraham was falsified." How does the 
Apostle answer 1 Obviously (and irresistibly) that this covenant was 
never meant to embrace all his lineage as an aggregate, Rom. ix : 6. 
"Not as though the word (covenant) of God had taken none effect." For 
they are not all Israel, which are of Israel," &c. This decisive fact he 
then proves, by reminding the Jews that, at the very first descent, 
one of Abraham's sons was excluded, and the other chosen, and at the 
next descent, where not only the father, but the mother was the same, 
and the children were even twins of one birth (to make the most abso- 
lute possible identity of lineage) one was again sovereignly excluded. 
So, all down the line, some Hebrews of regular linexge were excluded, 
and some chosen. Thus, the Apostle's scope require the disintegrat- 
ing of the supposed aggregates ; the very line of his argument compels 
us to deal with individuals, instead of masses. But, according to Wat- 
son, the Apostle, in speaking of the rejection of Esau, and the selection 
of Jacob, and of the remaining selections of Rom. ix and xi, only em- 
ploys the names of the two Patriarchs, to impersonate the two nations 
of Israel and Edom. He quotes in confirmation, Mai. i : 2, 3 ; Gen. 
xxv: 23.. But as Calvin well remarks, the primogeniture typified the 
blessing of true redemption ; so that Jacob's election to the former re- 
presented that to the latter. Let the personal histories of the two 
men decide this. Did not the mean, supplanting Jacob become the 
humble penitent saint ; while the generous, dashing Esau degenerated 
into the reckless, Pagan, Nomad chief? The selection of the two pos- 
terities, the one for Church privileges, and the other for Pagan defec- 
tion, was the consequence of the personal election and rejection of the 
two progenitors. The Arminian gloss violates every law of Hebrew 
thought and religious usage. According to these, the posterity follow 
the status of their progenitor. According to the Arminians^ the pro- 



152 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

genitors would follow the status of their posterity. Farther, the whole 
discussion of these chapters is personal, it is individuals with whom 
God deals here. The election cannot he of masses to privilege, be- 
cause the elect are explicitly excepted out of the masses to which they 
belonged ecclesiastically. See ch. ix : vv. 6, 7, 15, 23, 24; ch. xi : vv. 
2, 4, 5, V. "The election hath obtained it and the rest were blinded." 
The discussion ranges, also, over others than Hebrews and Edomites, 
to Pharaoh, an individual unbeliever, &c. Last, the blessings given in 
this election are personal. See Rom. viii : 29; Eph. i: 5; 2 Thess. 
ii: 13. 

III. Predestination eternal, efficacious, unchangeable, &c. — 
God's decree we found possessed of the properties of unity, universali- 
ty, eternity, efficiency and immutability, sovereignty, absoluteness and 
wisdom. Inasmuch as predestination is but a part, to our apprehen- 
sion of this decree, it partakes of all those properties, as a part of the 
whole. And the general evidence would be the same presented on the 
general subject of the decree. The part of course is not universal as 
was the whole. But we shall find just what the general argument 
would have led us to expect : that the decree of predestination is, 

a.) Eternal. Eph. i : 4. "He hath chosen us in Christ before the 
foundation of the world." 2 Thess. ii : 13. "From the beginning." 
2 Tim. i : 9. "Before the world began." (See last Lect.) 

b.) Immutably efficacious. There is no reason why this part of the de- 
cree should not be as much so as all the rest; for God's foreknowledge 
and control of the acts of all His creatures have been already estab- 
lished. He has no more difficulty in securing the certain occurrence 
of all those acts of volition, from man and devils, which are necessary 
to the certain redemption of the elect, than in any other department 
of His almighty providence; Why then, should this part of the de- 
cree be exempted from those emphatic assertions of its universal and 
absolute efficacy? Numb, xxiii : 19; Ps. xxxiii : 11. Is. xlvi : 10. 
But farther, unless God's purpose of saving each elect sinner were im- 
mutable and efficacious, Christ would have no certain warrant that He 
would ever see of the travail of His soul at all. For the same causes that 
seduced one might seduce another. Again : no sinner is saved with- 
out special and Almighty grace ; for his depravity is total, and his heart 
wholly averse from God ; so.thatif God has not provided, in His eternal 
plan, resources of gracious power, adequate to subdue unto Himself, 
and to sustain in grace, every sinner He attempts to save, I see no 
probability that any will be saved at all. For, the proneness to apos- 
tasy is such in all, that if God did not take efficacious care of them, 
the best would backslide and fail of Heaven. The efficacy of the de- 
cree of election is also proved by the fact, that God has pre-arranged 
all the means for its effectuation. See Rom. viii : 29, 30. And in fine, 
a multitude of Scripture confirms this precious truth : Matt, xxiv : 24 ; 
Jno. x : 28-30 ; 17 : 6 and 12 ; Heb. 6 : 17 ; 2 Tim. ii : 19. 

Objections to efficient predestination. — Objections against this 
gracious truth are almost countless, as though instead of being one of 
the most precious in Scripture it were oppressive and cruel. It is said 
that the infallibility of the elect, and their security in Christ, Matt. 
xxiv: 24; Jno. x: 28, only guarantee them againt such assaults as 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 153 

their free will may refuse to assent to; and imply nothing as to the 
purpose of God to permit or prevent the object of His favour from go- 
ing astray of his own accord. Not to tarry on more minute answers, 
the simple reply to this is: that then there would he no guarantees at 
all ; and these gracious Scriptures are mere mockeries of our hope ; 
for it is notorious that the only way the spiritual safety of a believer 
can be injured is by the assent of his own free-will, because it is only 
then that there is responsibility or guilt. 

Objected that the Saints warned against falling. — It is ob- 
jected that this election cannot be immutably efficacious, because we read 
in Scripture of Saints who are warned against forfeiting it ; of others 
who felt a wholesome fear of doing so ; and of God's threats that He 
would, on occasion of certain sins, blot their names from His book of 
life, &c. Rom. xiv : 15; 1 Cor. ix : 27; Ps. lxix : 28: Rev. xxii:19; 
2 Pet. i : 10. As to the last passage, to make sure, bebaian poieisthai, 
our election, is most manifestly spoken only with reference to the be- 
liever's own apprehension of it, and comfort from it; not as to the 
reality of God's secret purpose. This is fully borne out by the means 
indicated — diligence in holy living. Such fruits being the consequence 
and not the cause of God's grace to us, it would be simply preposter- 
ous to propose to ensure or strengthen His secret purpose of grace, 
by their productions. All they can do is to strengthen our own appre- 
hension that such a purpose exists. When the persecuted Psalmist 
praps, Ps. lxix; 28, that God would "blot his enemies eut of the book 
of the living," it by no means seems clear that anything more is impre- 
cated than their removal from this life. But grant the other meaning, 
as we do, in Rev. xxii : 19, the obvious explanation is that God speaks 
of them according to their seeming and profession. The language is 
adapted ad hominem. It is not intended to decide whether God has a 
sacret immutable purpose of love or not, as to them, whether they were 
ever elected and effectually called indeed, and may yet be lost ; but it 
only states the practical truth, that wickedness would forieit that posi- 
tion in God's grace, which they professed to have. Several of the other 
passages are in part explained by the tact that the Christians addrested 
had not yet attained a comfortable assurance that they were elected. 
Hence they might most consistently feel all these wholesome fears, lest 
the partial and uncertain hope they entertained might turn out spuri- 
ous. But the most general and thorough answer which covers all these 
cases is this: Granting that God has a secret purpose infallibly to save 
a given soul, that purpose embraces means as fully as ends ; and thosd 
means are such as suit a rational free agent, including all reasonable 
appeals to hope and fear, prospect of danger, &c, &c. Now, that an 
elect man may fall totally is naturally possible, considering him in his 
own powers; hence when God plies this soul with fears of falling, it is 
by no means any proof that God intends to permit him to fall, in His 
secret purpose. Those fears may be the very means designed by God 
to keep him from it. 

Selection not a caprice. — c.) God's predestination is wise. It is 
not grounded on the foreseen excellence of the elect, but it is doubt- 
less grounded on good reasons, worthy of the Divine wisdom. See Rom. 
xi :-end, words spoken by Paul with especial reference to this part of 



154 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the decree. The sovereignty and unconditioned nature of God's de- 
cree will be postponed till we come to discuss the Arniinian views. 

Angels are predestinated. — IV. There is undoubtedly a predes" 
tination of angels. They are a part of God's creation and government 
and if what we have asserted of the universality of His purpose is 
true, it must fix their destiny and foresee all their acts just as men's. 
His sovereignty, wisdom, infinite foreknowledge, and power necessitate 
the supposition. The Scripture confirms it, telling us of elect angels, 
1 Tim. v : 21 ; of "holy angels," Matt, xxv : Z\,et passim, as contrasted 
with wicked angels ; that "God spared not the angels that sinned, but 
cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to 
be reserved into judgment," 2 Pet. ii : 4. Of the "everlasting fire pre- 
pared for the devil and his angels," Matt, xxv : 41. Of the "angels 
which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, whom 
God hath reserved under darkness, in everlasting chains unto the judg- 
ment of the great day," Jud. vi, and of Michael and his angels, and 
the Dragon and his angels," Rev. xii : 7. Collating these passages, I 
think we clearly learn, that there are two kinds of spirits of that order ; 
holy and sinful angels, servants of Christ and servants of Satan ; that 
they were all created in an estate of holiness and happiness, and abode 
in the region called Heaven ; (God's holiness and goodness are suffi- 
cient proof that He would never have created them otherwise), that the 
evil angels voluntarily forfeited their estate by sinning, and were then 
excluded forever from Heaven and holiness ; that those who maintained 
their estate were elected thereto by God, and that their estate of holi- 
ness and blessedness is now forever assured. Now the most natural in- 
ference from these Bible facts is, that a covenant of ivorks was the dis- 
pensation under which God's predestination of angels was effectuated. 
The fact that those who sinned fell thereby into a state of irreparable 
condemnation is most naturally explained by such a covenant. The 
fact that the elect angels received the adoption of life by maintaining 
their holiness for a time, seems almost to necessitate that supposition. 
That the probation under that covenant was temporary, is implied in 
the fact that some are already separated, and known as elect, while 
others are condemned. The former must be finally justified and con- 
firmed ; the latter finally reprobated. 

Predestination of angels differs from men's. — 1st. Now it is 
manifest that these gracious and righteous dealings of God with His an- 
gels in time, were all foreordained by Him from eternity. Those who 
fell, He must have permissively ordained to fall, and those who are 
confirmed, He must have selected from eternity to be confirmed. But 
in two respects, this election of angels differs from that of men. God's 
predestination apprehended men, as all lying alike in a mass of total 
depravity and condemnation, and the difference He has made was in 
pure mercy, unprompted by any thing of good foreseen in the saints. 
But God's predestination apprehended angels as standing alike in 
innocency at first, and as left to the determination of a will which as 
yet had full ability to keep the law perfectly. In the election of men, 
while the decree is unconditional, its effectuation is dependent on the 
elect man's believing and repenting. So, in the case of angels, while 
vhe decree was unconditional the effectuation of it seems to have been 



OF LECTURES IN" THEOLOGY. 155 

conditioned on the elect angel's keeping the law perfectly for a given 
time. Now here is the difference of the two cases, in the elect man the 
ability of will to perform that condition of his salvation is inwrought 
in him by God's power, executing His efficacious decree, (see last Lect.) 
by His sovereign and almighty regeneration of the dead soul. In the 
case of the elect angel, the condition of his salvation was fulfilled in 
his own natural strength ; and was ordained by God no otherwise than 
by His permissive decree. So also, the effectuating of the reprobation 
of the non-elect angels were dependent on their voluntary disobedience, 
and this too was only determined by God's permissive decree. Tt has 
been asked if all the angels were alike innocent and peccable, with 
full ability of will to keep the law perfectly, and yet with freedom of 
will to sin ; how came it that the experiment did not result alike for 
all, that all did not fall or stand, that like causes did not produce like 
effects ] Must there not have been a cause for the different results ? 
And must not this cause be sought outside the angels' wills, in God's 
agency? The answer is : that the outward relations of no two beings 
to circumstances and beings other than themselves can ever be identi- 
cal. In those different circumstances, were presented different occasional 
causes for volitions, sufficient to account for different volitions, from wills 
that were at first in similar moral states. And it was by His providen- 
tial ordering of those outward relations and circumstances, that God 
was able permissively to determine the results. Yet the acts of the 
two classes of angels, good and bad, were wholly their own. 

2d difference. — The second difference between their election and 
man's, is that the angels were not chosen in a mediator. They needed 
none, because they were not chosen out of a state of guilt, and had not 
arrayed God's moi'al attributes against them. Some have supposed 
that their confirming grace was and is mediated to them by Jesus 
Christ, quoting Col. ii : 10 ; i : 14, 15 ; 1 Pet. i : 12 ; Heb. i : 6 ; Phil. 
2 : 10 ; 1 Pet. iii : 22 ; Eph. i : 10 ; Col. i : 20. 

These passages doubtless teach that the Son was, in the beginning, 
the immediate agent of creation for these, as for all other beings ; and 
that the God-man now includes angels in His mediatorial kingdom, in 
the same sense in which He includes the rest of the universe, besides 
the saints. But that He is not a mediator for angels is clear, from the 
fact that, while He is never called such, He is so emphatically called 
the Mediator between God and man," 1 Tim. ii : 5, Second. He has 
assumed no community of nature with angels. Last, It is expressly 
denied in Heb. ii : 16,17. (Greek.) 

V. All who call themselves Calvinists admit that God's decree is, in 
His mind, a cotemporaneous unit. Yet the attempt to assign an order 
to its relative parts, has led 'to three different schemes of predestina- 
tion : that of the Supralapsarian, of the Sublapsarian, and of the 
Hypothetic Universalist. 

Supralapsarian scheme. — The first suppose that in a rational mind, 
that which is ultimate as end, is first in design ; and that, in the pro- 
cess of planning, the mind passes from the end to the means, travelling 
as it were backwards. Hence, God first designed His own glory by the 
salvation of a definite number of men conceived as yet only as in posse, 
and the reprobation of another definite number ; that then He purposed 



156 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

their creation, then the permission of their fall, and then the other parts 
of the plan of redemption for the elect. 1 do not mean to represent that 
they impute to God an actual succession of time as to the rise of the 
parts of the decree in His eternal mind, but that these divines repre- 
sent God as planning man's creation and fall, as a means for carrying 
out His predestination, instead of planning his election as a means for 
repairing his fall. 

Sublapsarian scheme. — The Sublapsarian assigns the opposite order? 
that God determined to create man in His own image, to place him 
under a covenant of works, to permit his fail and with reference to the 
fallen and guilty state thus produced, to elect in sovereign mercy S)me 
to be saved, passing by the rest in righteous judgment upon their sins, 
and that He further decreed to send Jesus Christ to redeem the elect. 
This milder scheme the Supralapsarians assert to be attended with the 
vice of the Arminian, in making the decree conditional; in that God's 
decree of predestination is made dependent on man's use of his free 
will under the covenant of works. They also assert that their scheme 
is the symmetrical one, in that it assigns the rational order which exists 
between ultimate end and intermediate means. 

Both erroneous. — Tn my opinion this is a question which never 
ought to have been raised. Both schemes are illogical and contradictory 
to the true state of facts. But the Sublapsarian is far more Scriptural 
in its tendencies, and its general spirit far more honourable to God. 
The Supralapsarian, under a pretense of greater symmetry, is in reality 
the more illogical of the two, and misrepresents the divine character 
and the facts of Scripture in an odious and repulsive manner. The 
view from which it starts, that the ultimate end must be first in design, 
and then the intermediate means, is of force only with reference to a 
finite mind. God's decree has no succession ; and to Him no successive 
order of parts; because it is a cotemporaneous unit, comprehended all 
together, by one infinite intuition. In this thing, the statements of 
both parties are untrue to God's thought. The true statement of the 
matter is, that in this co-etaneous unit plan, one part of the plan is de- 
vised by God with reference to a state of facts which He intended to 
Tesult from another part of the plan ; but all parts equally present, 
and all equally primary to His mind. As to the decree to create man, 
to permit his fall, to elect some to life ; neither part preceded any other 
part ivith God.Bat His purpose to elect had reference to a state of facts 
which was to result from His purpose to create, and permit the fall. 
It does not seem to me that the Sublapsarian scheme makes the decree 
conditional. True, one result decreed is dependent on another result 
decreed ; but this is totally another thing. No schem s can avoid this, 
not even the Supralapsarian, unless it does away with all agency ex- 
cept God's direct, and makes Him the direct author of sin. 

Objections to the Supralapsarian. — But we object more particu- 
larly to the Supralapsarian scheme. 

a.) That it is an absurbity, in representing God as having before His 
mind, as the objects of predestination, men conceived in posse only ; 
and in making creation a means of their salvation or damnation. 
Whereas, an object must be conceived as existing, in order to have its 
destiny given to it. And creation can with no propriety be called a 



OF LECTURES IK THEOLOGY. 157 

means for effectuating a decree of predestination as to creatures. It is 
rather a pre-requisite of such decree. 

b.) It contradicts Scripture, which teaches us that God chose His 
elect "out of the world," Jno. xv : 19, and out of the "same lump" 
with the vessels of dishonour, Rom. ix : 21. They were then regarded 
as being, a.ong with the non-elect, in the common state of sin and 
misery. 

c.) Our election is in Christ our Redeemer, Eph. i: 4; iii : 11, 
which clearly shows that we are conceived as being fallen, and in need 
of a Redeemer, in this act. And, moreover, our election is an election 
to the exercise of saving graces to be wrought iu us by Christ, 1 Pet. 
i : 2 ; 2 Thess. ii : 13. 

d.) Elect on is declared to be an act of mercy: Rom. ix : 15, 16; 
xi : 5, 6, and reprobation is an act of justice, Rom. ix • 22. Now as 
mercv and goodness imply an apprehension of guilt and misery in their 
object, so justice implies ill-desert. This shows that man is predesti- 
nated as fallen; and is not permitted to fall because predestinated. I 
will conclude this part, by repeating the language of Turrettin, L. 4, 
que. 18, § 5. 

1. "By this hypothesis, the first act of God's will towards some of 
His creatures is conceived to be an act of hatred, iu so far as He willed 
to demonstrate His righteouseess in their damnation, and indeed before 
they were considered as in sin, and consequently before they were de- 
serving of hatred ; nay, while the were conceived as still innocent, and 
so rather the objects of love. This does not seem compatible with God's 
ineffable goodness. 

It is likewise harsh that, according to this scheme, God is supposed 
to have imparted to them far the greatest effects of love, out of a prin- 
ciple of hatred, in that He determines to create them in a state of in- 
tegrity to this end, that He u ay illustrate His righteousness in their 
damnation. This seems to express Him neither as supremely good nor 
as supremely wise and just. 

3. It is erroneously supposed that God exercised an act of mercy and 
justice towards His creatures in His foreordination of their salvation 
and destruction, in that they are conceived as neither wretched, nor 
even existing as yet. But since those virtues (mercy and justice) are 
relative, they pre-suppose their object, do not make it. 

4. It is also asserted without warrant, that creation and the fall are 
means of election and reprobation, since they are antecedent to them : 
else sin would be on account of damnation, whereas damnation is on 
account of sin ; and God would be said to have created men that He 
might destroy them. 



158 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

LECTURE XX. 



SYLLABUS. 
PKEDESTINATION (Concluded-) 

1. State the doctrine as taught by the Hypothetic Universalists, Amyraut and 
Camero. 

Turrettin. Loc. iv, ques. 17th and 18th, §13-20. Watson's Theol. Inst., 
chap, xxviii, §1, 2. Richard Baxter's "Universal Redemption." 

2. State and refute the Arminian scheme of predestination. 

Turrett., Loc. iv, ques. 10th, 11th, 12th and 17th. Hill, Div., Bk. iv, ch. 
vii, § 2 and 4. Dick, Lect. 35. Watson's ubi supra. 

3. What is God's decree of reprobation, as to those finally lost ? What its 
ground? How proved? And how does God harden such ? 

Tunett., Loc. iv, ques. 14th, 15th. Hill, as above. Dick, Lect. 36. 
Wesley's Sermons. 

4. Is predestinantion consistent with God's justice ? With His holiness ? 
With His benevolence and sincerity in the offer of mercy to all? 

Calvin's Inst., Bk. iii, ch. 23; Hill as above. Dick, Lect. 36. Jno. 
Howe. Letter to Ro. Boyle. Turrett., Fontes Sol. Loc. iv, que. 17 

5. What should be the mode of preaching and practical effect of the doctrine 
of predestination on the Christian life ? 

Turrett. Loc. iv, que. 6. Dick, Lect. 36. Conf. of Faith, ch. iii. 

Hypothetic scheme. — T. The French Presbyterian Divines of Sau- 
mur about 1630-50 devised still another scheme of relations between 
the parts of the decree, representing God as first (in order, not in time) 
purposing to create man ; second, to place him under a covenant of 
works, and to permit his fall ; third, to send Christ to provide and offer 
an atonement for all, out of His genex-al compassion for all the fallen; 
but fourth, foreseeing that all would surely reject it because of their 
total depravity, to select out of the rebellious mass, some, in His sov- 
ereign mercy, to whom He would give effectual calling. They sup- 
posed that this theory would remove the difficulties concerning the ex- 
tent of the atonement, and also reconcile the passages of Scripture 
which declare God's universal compassion for sinners, with His repro- 
bation of the non-elect. 

Wherein untenable. — This scheme is free from many of the objec- 
tions which lie against the Arminian; it holds fast to the truth of 
original sin, and it avoids the absurdity of conditioning God's decree 
of election on a foresight of the saints' faith and repentance. But in 
two respects it is untenable. If the idea of a real succession in time 
between the parts of the divine decree be relinquished, as it must be, 
then this scheme is perfectly illusory, in representing God as decreeing 
to send Christ to provide a redemption to be offered to all, on condition 
of faith and this out of His general compassion. For if He foresees 
the certain rejection of all at the time, and at the same time purposes 
sovereignly to withhold the grace which would work faith in the soul 
from some, this scheme of election really makes Christ to be related, in 
God's purpose, to the non-elect, no more closely nor beneficially than 
the stricter Calvinistic scheme. But second and chiefly, it represents 
Christ as not purchasing for His people the grace of effectual calling, 
by which they are persuaded and enabled to embrace redemption. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 159 

But God's purpose to confer this is represented as disconnected with 
Christ and His purchase, and subsequent, in order, to His work, and the 
foresight of its rejection by sinners. Whereas Scripture represents that 
this gift, along with all other graces of redemption, is given us in Christ, 
having been purchased for His people by Him. Eph. i : 3 ; Phil, i : 29 ; 
Heb.xii:2. 

II. Arminian Scheme. — I have postponed to the last, the fourth 
scheme for arranging the order of the parts of the decree, which is the 
Arminian. Unwilling to rob God openly of His infinite perfection, as 
is done by the Socinians, they admit that He has some means of fore- 
seeing the contingent acts of free-agent, although He neither can nor 
does consistently with their free-agency, exercise any direct foreordina- 
tion over those acts. Such contingent acts, they say, would be un- 
knowable to a finite mind ; but this does not prove that God may not 
have some mode of certainly foreknowing them which implies no foreordi- 
nation, and which is inscrutable to us. This foresight combines with 
His eternal purpose in the following order. 1st. God decreed to create 
man holy and happy, and to place him under a covenant of works. 
2nd. God, foreseeing man's fall into a state of total depravity and con- 
demnation, decreed to send Jesus Christ to provide redemption for all. 
(This redemption included the purchase of common sufficient grace for 
all sinners.) And God also, in this connexion, determined the gene- 
ral principle that faith should be the condition of an actual interest in 
this redemption. 3d. Next He foresaw that some would so improve 
their common grace as to come to Christ, turn from sin and persevere 
in holiness to the end of life. These He eternally purposed to save. 
Others, He foresaw, would neglect their privileges, so as to reject, or 
after embracing, to forsake Christ ; and these He eternally purposed to 
leave in their guilt and ruin. Thus His purpose as to individuals, 
while eternal, is conditioned wholly on the conduct foreseen in them. 

Objections. 1. That the decree cannot be conditional. — This 
plausible scheme seems to be, at the first glance, attended with several 
advantages for reconciling God's goodness and sincerity with the sinner's 
damnation. But the advantages are only seeming For 1. The scheme is 
overthrown by all the reasons which showed generally that God's decrees 
cannot be conditional ; and especially by these, a.) That every one of 
the creature acts is also foreordained, on which a part of the decree is 
supposed to be conditioned, b.) That all the future events into which 
these contingent acts enter, directly or indirectly, as causes, must be 
also contingent: which would cast a quality of uncertainty and possible 
failure over God's whole plan of redemption and moral government, 
and much of His other providence, c.) And that God would no longer 
be absolute sovereign ; for, instead of the creatures depending on Him 
alone, He would depend on the creature. 

2. That Paul does not reply thus to cavils. — One can scarcely 
believe that Paul would have answered the objections usually raised 
against God's sovereign decree as He does in Bum. ix, had He incul- 
cated this Arminian view of it. In verses 14 and 19, he anticipates 
those objections ; 1st that God would be unjust ; 2d that He would de- 
stroy man's free agency, and He deigns no other answer than to re- 
affirm the absolute sovereignty of God in the matter, and to repudiate 
the objections as sinful cavils. How different this from the answer of 



160 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the Arminian to these cavils; he always politely evades them hy say- 
ing that all God's dealings with men are suspended on the improve- 
ment they choose to make of His common mercy offered to them. 
This contrast leads us to believe that St. Paul was not an Arminian. 

3. Faith, &c, consequences op electing grace. — The believer's 
faith, penitence, and perseverance in holiness could never be so fore- 
seen by God, as to be the condition moving him to determine to bestow 
salvation on him, because no child of Adam ever has any true faith, 
&c, except as fruits of God's grace bestowed in election. This is 
evinced in manifold ways throughout Scripture, a.) Man is too de- 
praved ever to exercise these graces, except as moved thereto by God, 
Kom. viii : 7; 2 Cor. iii : 5; Rom. vii : 18; Gen. vi : 5. b.) The 
elect are declared to be chosen to the enjoyment of these graces, not on 
account of the exercise of them, Rom. viii: 29; 2 Thess. ii : 13, 14; 
Eph.i: 4 ; ii : 10. c.) The very faith, penitence and perseverance in 
holiness which Arminians represent as conditions moving God to elect 
man, the Scripture represents as gifts of God's grace inwrought by Him 
in the elect, as consequences of his election, Eph. ii : 8 ; Acts v: 31 ; 
2 Tim. ii : 25 ; Phil, i : 6 ; 2 Pet. i : 3. d.) All the elect believe on 
Christ, Jno. x: 16, 27 to 29; vi : 37, 39; xvii : 2,9, 24, and none 
others do, Jno. x : 26 ; Acts xiii : 48 ; 2 : 47. Couple these two facts 
together and they furnish a strong evidence that faith is the consequence 
(therefore not the cause) of election. 

4. Express texts. — The Scriptures in the most express and emphatic 
terms declare that it was no goodness in the elect which caused God 
to choose them ; that his electing love found them lying in the same 
mass of corruption and wrath with the reprobate, every way deserviag 
the same fate, and chose them out of it for reasons commending them- 
selves to His own good pleasure, and in sovereign benevolence. This 
was seen in Jacob and Esau, Rom. ix : 1 1-13, as to Israel : Ezek. xvi : 
3-6. As to all sinners, Rom. ix : 16 ; xv : 18, 21 ; Rom, xi : 4-7 ; viii : 
28. (Here the Arminians claim that God's foreknowledge precedes 
and prompts His foreordination. But we have shown that this fore- 
knowledge implies selection.) 2 Tim. i: 9; Matt, xi : 26: Jno. xv: 
16-19. 

III. Reprobation. — The word reprobate (adokimos) is not, so far 
as I know, applied in the Scriptures to the subject of predestination. 
Its etymology and usage would suggest the meaning of something re- 
jected upon undergoing a test or trial, and hence, something condemned 
or rejected. Thus Rom. i : 28, adoktmon noun, a mind given over 
to condemnation and desertion, in consequence of great sin, 2 Tim. iii : 
8. Sectaries, adokimoi peri ten pistin, finally condemned and given 
over to apostasy concerning the Christian system. 1 Cor. ix : 27, "Lest* 
after I have preached to others, I myself should be adokimos," rejected 
at the final test. i. e., Judgment Day. Hence the more general sense 
of "worthless," Tit. i: 16; Heb. vi : 8. 

The word ill-chosen. — The application of this word to the negative 
part of the decree of predestination has doubtless prejudiced our cause. 
It is calculated to misrepresent and mislead, because it suggests too 
much the idea of a comparative judicial result. For then the query 
arises, if the non-elect and elect have been tested as to their deserts , 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 161 

in the divine mind, how comes it that the elect are acquitted when they 
are as guilty, and the non-elect condemned when they are no worse 1 
Is not this partiality ? But the fact is, that in election God acted as a 
sovereign , as well as a judge ; and that the elect are not taken because 
they are less guilty upon trial, but because God had other secret, 
though sufficient reasons. If the negative part of the decree of pre- 
destination then must be spoken of as a decree of reprobation, it must 
be understood in a modified sense. 

Does it include preterition and predamnation. — The theolo- 
gians, while admitting the strict unity of God's decree, divide reproba- 
tion into two elements, as apprehended by us, preterition and pre-damna- 
tion. I would rather say, that it consists simply of a sovereign yet 
righteous purpose to leave out the non-elect, which preterition was fore- 
seen and intended to result in their final righteous condemnation. The 
decree of reprobation is then, in its essence, a simple preterition . It is 
indeed intelligent and intentional in God. He leaves them out of His 
efficacious plan and purpose of mercy, not out of a general inattention or 
overlooking of them, but knowingly and sovereignly. Yet objectively 
this act is only negative, because God does nothing to those thus passed 
by, to make their case any worse, or to give any additional momentum 
to their downward course. He leaves them as they are. Yea, inciden- 
tally, He does them many kindnesses, extends to multitudes of them 
the calls of His words, and even the remonstrances of His spirit, pre- 
venting them from becoming as wicked as they would otherwise have 
done. But the practical or efficacious part of His decree is, simply 
that He will not "make them willing in the day of His power." 

Preterition proved. — When we thus explain it, there is abundant 
evidence of a decree of preterition. It is inevitably implied in the de- 
cree of election, coupled with the fact that all are neither elected nor 
saved. If salvation is of God; if God is a Being of infinite intelli- 
gence, and if He has eternally purposed to save some; then He has 
ipso facto equally purposed from eternity to leave the others in their 
ruin. And to this agree the Scriptures, Bom. ix : 13, 17, 18, 21 and 
22; Matt, xi: 25; Bom. xi : 7 ; 2 Tim. ii : 20; Jude. iv : 1 Pet. 
ii: 8. 

Objections. Answers. — This is a part of God's word which has 
ever been assailed with the fiercest cavils. It has been represented as 
as picturing a God who created a number of unfortunate immortals, 
and endued them with capacities for sinning and suffering, only in order 
that He might damn them forever; and to this wretched fate they are 
inexorably shut up, by the iron decree, no matter what penitent efforts 
or what cries for mercy and escape they may put forth ; while the 
equally or more guilty objects of the divine caprice and favouritism 
are admitted to a Heaven which they cannot forfeit, no matter how vilely 
they behave. There is no wonder that a Wesley should denounce the 
doctrine thus misrepresented, as worthy only of Satan. There is, indeed, 
enough in the truth of this subject, to fill every thoughtful mind with 
solemn awe and holy fear of that God, who holds the issues of our re- 
demption in His sovereign hand. But how differently does His dealing 
appear when we remember that He created all His creatures at first in 
holiness and happiness ; that He gave them an adequate chance to stand ; 



162 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

that He has done nothing to make the case of the non-elect worse than 
their own choice makes it, but on the contrary sincerely and mercifully 
warns them by conscience and His word against that wicked choice ; 
that it is all a monstrous dream to fancy one of these non-elect seeking 
Heaven by true penitence, and excluded by the inexorable decree, 
because they all surely yet voluntarily prefer their impenitence, so 
that God is but leaving them to their preferred ways; and that the 
only way He ensures the elect from the destruction due their sins, is by 
ensuring their repentance, faith, and diligent strivings to the end in a 
holy life. 

Is PRETERITION GROUNDED ON THE SIN OF THOSE PASSED BY 1 Yet it 

must be confessed that some of the odiousness of the doctrine is in 
part due to the unwise views of it presented by the Orthodox some- 
times, going beyond all that God's majesty, sovereignty and word re- 
quire, out of a love of hypothesis. Thus, it is disputed what is the 
ground of .this righteous pretention of the non-elect. The honest reader 
of his Bible would suppose that it was, of course, their guilt and wick- 
edness foreseen by God, and, for wise reasons, permissively decreed by 
Him. This we saw, all but the supralapsarian admitted in substance. 
God's election is everywhere represented in Scripture, as an act of mercy, 
and His preterition as an act of righteous anger against sin. The elect 
are vessels of mercy, the non-elect of wrath. (God does not show anger 
at any thing but sin) as in Koin. ix : 22. Everywhere it is sin which 
excludes from His favour, and sin alone. 

But it is urged, with an affected over-refinement, the sin of the non-elect 
cannot be the ground of God's preterition, because all Adam's seed be- 
ing viewed as equally depraved, had this been the ground, all would 
have been passed by. I reply, yes ; if this had been the only consid- 
eration, pro or con, present in God's mind. The ill-desert of all was 
in itself a sufficient ground for God to pass by all. But when His sov- 
ereign wisdom suggested some reason, unconnected with the relative 
desert or ill-desert of sinners, which was a good and sufficient ground 
for God's choosing a part; this only left the same original ground, ill- 
desert, operating on His mind as to the remainder. It is perfectly true 
that God's sovereignty concerns itself with the preterition as well as 
the election, for the separate reason which grounded the latter is sov- 
ereign. But with what propriety can it be said that this secret 
sovereign reason is the ground of his preterition, when the very "git" 
of the case was that it was a reason which did not apply to the non- 
elect, but only to the elect. As to the elect, it overruled the ground 
for their preterition which would otherwise have been found, in their 
common ill-desert. As to the non-elect, it did not apply, and thus left 
the original ground, their ill-deserts in full force. 

It is said again, that if we make their sin the ground of their re- 
jection, then by parity of reasoning, we must make the foreseen piety 
of the other class the ground of their election ; and thus return to the 
Arminian doctrine of conditional decrees. [As perverse a sophism as 
though it were inferred that because a surfeit of stewed eels killed King 
John of England, therefore abstineuce from them should make other 
men immortal.] The four heads of argument which I gave against the 
Arminian's conditional decree, contain substantially all that can be 
urged on that point. And the key of them all is, that foreseen piety 
could not have been the around moving God to decree men's salvation : 



OF LECTURES IN" THEOLOGY. 163 

because no men will have any piety to foresee, save as it is the result of 
G-od's grace bestowed from election. But is it so with men's sin? Just 
the opposite. Sin is the very condition in which God foresees all men 
as standing, for all except Supralapsarians admit that God in predestina- 
tion regards man as fallen. Man's foreseen sin may be the ground of 
God preterition, because it is not the effect of that preterition, but of 
another part of His eternal purpose, viz : that to permit the fall. And, 
as again and again taught, while the decree is absolute the results decreed 
are conditioned ; and we cannot but conceive God as predicating one 
part of his eternal purpose on a state of facts which was destined to 
proceed out of another part thereof. 

Again : it is said, Scriptures teach, that the sin of the non-elect was 
not the ground of their preterition. "In Jno. x : 26, continued unbe- 
lief is the consequence, and therefore not the ground of the Pharisees' 
preterition." Matt, xi : 25; Rom. ix : 11, 18. "God's will," they 
say, "and not -the non-elect's sin, is the ground of His purpose to 
harden." And "Esau was rejected as much without regard to his evil, 
as Jacob was elected without regard to his good deeds." To the first, 
I reply, that the withholding of God's grace is the negative cause of 
sinner's unbelief, just as the absence of a physician is a negative cause 
of the sick man's death. Yet, positively, it is only the disease which 
kills him. To the second, God's will decides ; but it is a will guided 
by righteousness. Nothing but sin moves a righteous will to punish. 
To the third, I reply, just as Turrettin does to the Supralapsarian, that 
it is only a relative guilt and innocence between Esau and Jacob, which 
the Apostle asserts. In fact, both "were by nature children of wrath, 
even as others." 

God's hardening what 1 — When it is said that God hardens the 
non-elect, it is not, and cannot be intended that he exerts positive in- 
fluences upon them to make them worse. The proof of this was given 
under the question, whether God can be the author of sin. See espe- 
cially Jas. i: 13. God is only the negative cause of hardening — the 
positive depravation comes only from the sinner's own voluntary feel- 
ings and acts. And the mode in which God gives place to, or permits 
this self-inflicted work, is by righteously withholding His restraining 
word and spirit ; and second by surrounding the sinner (through His 
permissive providence) with such occasions and opportunities as the 
guilty man's perverse will will voluntarily abuse to increase his guilt 
and obduracy. This dealing, though wrong in men, is righteous in 
God ; because He alone is the appointed Betributor, and revenger of sin 
in this universe, Rom. xii : 19. 

IV. Is predestination unjustly partial. — To notice briefly the 
standing objections : The doctrine of predestination as we have defined 
it, is not inconsistent with the justice and impartiality of God. His 
agency in the fall of angels and men was only permissive — the act and 
choice were theirs. They having broken God's law and depraved them- 
selves, it would have been just in God to leave them all under con- 
demnation. How then can it be more than just when he punishes only 
a part 1 The charge of partiality has been absurdly brought here, as 
though there could be partiality where there are no rights at all, in any 
creature on the mercy of God ; and Acts x : 34 ; Levit. xix : 15 ; Deut. 
i : 17 ; 2 Sam. xiv : 14, have been quoted against us. As Calvin very 



164 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

acutely remarks on the first of these, one's persona, peospo^t, in the 
sense of these passages means, not his moral character, as judicially 
well or ill-deserving, but his accidental position in society, as Jew or 
Gentile, rich or poor, plebeian or nobleman. And in this sense it is 
literally true of election, that in it God respects no man's persona, but 
takes them, irrespective of all these factitious advantages and disad- 
vantages. To this foolish charge, Matt, xx : 15 is sufficient answer. 
God's sovereignty ought undoubtedly to come in as a reply. Within 
the bounds of His other perfections of righteousness, truth and benevo- 
lence, God is entitled to make what disposal of His own He is pleased, 
and men are his property — Rom. ix : 20,21. Paul does not imply 
here that God is capable of doing injustice to an innocent creature, in 
order to illustrate His sovereignty ; but that in such a case as this of 
predestination, where the condemnation of all would have been no more 
than they deserved. He can exercise His sovereignty, in sparing and 
punishing just such as He pleases, without a particle of injustice. 

Is it unholy 1 — 2. It is objected, that God's holiness would forbid 
such a predestination. How, it is said, can it be compatible with the 
fact that God hates sin, for Him to construct an arrangement, He hav- 
ing full power to effectuate a different one, by which He voluntarily and 
intentionally leaves multitudes of His creatures in increasing and ever- 
lasting wickedness? And the same objection is raised against it from 
His benevolence. The answer is, that this is but the same difficulty 
presented by the origin of evil ; and it presses on the Calvinist with 
no more force than on the Arminian, or even on the Socinian. Allow to 
God a universal, perfect foreknowledge, as the Arminian does, and the 
very same difficulty is presented. How an almighty God should have 
knowingly adopted a system for the universe, which would embody such 
results. For even if the grossest Pelagian view be adopted, that God 
is literally unable certainly to prevent the wicked acts of man's free 
will, and yet leave him a free agent, it would certainly have been in 
his power to let alone creating those who He foresaw would make a mise- 
rable immortality for themselves, in spite of His grace. The Arminian 
is obliged to say : "There are doubtless inscrutable reasons, unknown 
to us, but seen by God to be sufficient, why He should permit it?" The 
same appeal to our ignorance is just as available for the Calvinist. 
And if the lowest Socinian ground is taken, which denies to God a 
universal foreknowledge of the volitions of free agents, still we must 
suppose one of two things. He must either have less wisdom than many 
of His creatures, or else, he made these men and angels, knowing in the 
general, that large immortal misery would result. So that there is no 
evasion of this difficulty, except by so robbing God of His perfections 
as practically to dethrone Him It is not Calvinism which creates it; 
but the simple existence of sin and misery, destined never to be wholly 
extinguished, in the government of an almighty and omniscient God. 
He who thinks thinks he can master it by his theory, is a fool. 

How reconciled with Gospel offers to all 1 — 3. It is objected that 
God's goodness and sincerity in the offer of the Gospel to all is inconsis- 
tent with predestination. It is urged : God says He "hath no pleasure 
in the death of him that dieth ;" that He would have all men to be 
saved ; and that Christ declared His wish to save reprobate Jerusalem. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 165 

Now, how can these things, and His universal offer : "Whosoever will, 
let him come," consist with the fixed determination that the non- 
elect shall never be saved 1 I reply, that this difficulty (which cannot 
be wholly solved) is not generated by predestination, but lies equally 
against any other theory which leaves God His divine attributes. Let 
one take this set of facts. Here is a company of sinners, God could 
convert all by the same powers by which he converts one. He offers 
His salvation to all, and assures them of His general benevolence. He 
knows perfectly that some will neglect the offer ; and yet, so knowing, 
He intentionally retrains from exerting those powers to overrule their 
reluctance, zohich He is able to exert if He chose. This is but a state- 
ment of stubborn facts ; it cannot be evaded without impugning the 
omniscience, or omnipotence of God, or both. Yet, see if the whole 
difficulty is not involved in it. Every evangelical Christian, therefore, 
is just as much interested in seeking the solution of this difficulty 
as the Calvinist. And it is to be sought in the following brief 
suggestions. God's concern in trangression and impenitence of those 
whom He suffers to neglect His warnings and invitations, is only per- 
missive. He merely leaves men to their own sinful choice. His invi- 
tations are always impliedly, or explicitly conditional ; suspended on the 
sinner's turning. He has never said that He desires the salvation of a 
sinner as impenitent ; He only says, if the sinner will turn he is welcome 
to salvation. And this is always literally true ; were it in the line of pos- 
sibilities that one non-elect should turn, He would find it true in his 
case. All, therefore, that we have to reconcile is these three facts ; that 
God should see a reason why it is not proper, in certain cases, to put 
forth His almighty grace to overcome a sinner's reluctance ; and yet 
that He should be able to do it if he chose; and yet should be benev- 
olent and pitiful towards all His creatures. Now God says in His 
Word that He does compassionate lost sinners. He says that He could 
save if He pleased. His word and providence both show us that some 
are permitted to be lost. In a wise and good man, we can easily un- 
derstand how a power to pardon, a sincere compassion for a guilty crim- 
inal, and yet a fixed purpose to punish, could co-exist ; the power and 
compassion being overruled by His wisdom. Why may not something 
analogous take place in God, according to His immutable nature 1 Is it 
said: such an explanation implies a struggle in the breast between compet- 
ing considerations, inconsistent with God's calm blessedness? I reply, 
God's revelations of His wrath, love, pity, repentance, &c, are all 
anthropopathic, and the difficulty is no greater here, than in all these 
cases. Or is it said, that there can be nothing except a lack of will, 
or a lack of power to make the sinner both holy and happy 1 I an- 
swer ; it is exceeding presumption to suppose that because we do not 
see such a cause, none can be known to God ! 

V How to be taught, and its results. — "The doctrine of this 
high mystery of predestination is to be handled with special prudence 
and care." In preaching it, that proportion should be observed, which 
obtains in the Bible; and no polemical zeal against the impugners of 
the doctrine ought to tempt the minister to obtrude it more often. To 
press it prominently on anxious inquirers, or on those already confused 
by cavils of heretics or gatanic suggestions, or to urge it upon one in- 
clined to skepticism, or one devoid of sufficient Christian knowledge, 



166 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

experience and humility, is unsuitable and imprudent. And when 
taught, it should be in the mode which usually prevails in Scripture, 
viz : a posteriori, as inferred from its result, effectual calling. 

But when thus taught, the doctrine of predestination is full of edifi- 
cation. It gives ground for humility, because it leaves man no ground 
for claiming any of the credit of either originating or carrying on his 
salvation. It lays a foundation for confident hope ; because it shows 
that "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." It should 
open the fountains of love and gratitude, because it shows the unde- 
served and eternal love of God for the undeserving. We should learn 
to teach and to view the doctrine, not from an exclusive, but from an 
inclusive point of view. It is sin which shuts out from the favour of 
God, and which ruins. It is God's decree which calls back, and repairs 
and saves all who are saved. "Whatever of sin, of guilt, of misery, of 
despair the universe exhibits, arises wholly out of man's and Satan's 
transgression. Whatever of redemption, of hope, of comfort, of holi- 
ness and of bliss alleviates this sad panorama, all this proceeds from 
the decree of God. The decree is the fountain of universal benevo- 
lence, voluntary sin is the fountain of woe. Shall the fountain of 
mercy be maligned because, although it emits all the happiness in the 
universe, it has a limit to its streams'? 



LECTUBE XXL 



SYLLABUS. 
CREATION. 

1. "What is the usage and meaning of the word create in Scripture ? 
Turrettin, Loc. v.. que. 1. Lexicons. Dick, Lect. 37. 

2. How else have philosphers accounted for the existence of the universe, ex- 
cept by a creation out of nothing ? 

Turrettin, ubi supra. Dick as above. Brucher's Hist, of Phil. British 
Encyclopaedia, articles "Atomic Philosophy," and "Platonism." 

3. Prove that God created the world out of nothing ; first from Scripture, 
and second, from Reason and the objections to the eternity of the Universe and 
matter. 

Turrettin, Loc. v., que. 3. Dr. S. Clarke, Discourses of Being, &c, of 
God. Dick, as above. 

4. Can a creature receive the power of creating, by delegation from God ? 
Turrettin, Loc. v, que. 2. 

5. What was each day's work of creation, in the Mosaic week ? Genesis, ch. i. 
Turrettin, Loc. v, ques. 5, 6. On this and the previous questions see 
Knapp's Chr. Theol., Art. v, sections xlv to 1. 

6. What are the theories of modern Geologists concerning the age of the earth ? 
Their grounds, and the several modes proposed for reconciling them with the 
Mosaic history ? 

Hitchcock's Relig. and Geology. Univ. Lectures, Dr. Lewis Green. Hugh 
Miller, Testimony of the Rocks. Tayler Lewis' Symbol. Days. David N. 
Lord on Geol. Sir Charles Lyell's System of Geol. &c. 

1. Tekms defined. — The words rendered to create, cannot be con- 
sidered, in their etymology and usage, very distinctive of the nature of 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 167 

the act. The authorities make baea means "to cut or carve," prima- 
rily, (from the idea of splitting off pares, or separation) hence "to 
fashion," then to "create ;" and thence the more derivative sense of pro- 
ducing or generating, regenerating the heart, &c. The verb asah car- 
ries, according to the authorities, more of the sense of the Greek verb 
poleo — "to do or make ;" and is used for fashioning, manufacturing, 
doing (as a function or business), acquiring property &c. The verb 
tatsae seems to me to carry more distinctively the idea fashioning out 
of pre-existent materials, as a potter (yotsee) out of clay, &c. And 
it will be observed that wherever it is applied to making man or animals 
in Gen. the material out of which, is mentioned or implied as ii ; 7. 
God fashioned man (vaigitsee) out of the dust of the earth. The word 
usually employed from Greek in Septuagent and New Testament to ex- 
press the idea of creating, as distinguished from begetting or generat- 
ing is ktidzo. This, authorities say, means primarily to "found," or 
"build," and hence, "to make," "create." 

2. Creation was out of nothing. — It will be clearly seen hence* 
that the nature of the creative act is but faintly defined by the mere 
force of the words. Yet Scripture does not lack passages which expli- 
citly teach, that God produced the whole Universe out of nothing by 
His almighty power ; i. e.,that His first work of creation did not con- 
sist mei-ely of fashioning materials already existent, but of bringing 
all [substance, except His own, out of non-existence into existence. 
How impossible this seemed to the ancient mind appears from this fact, 
that the opposite was regarded as an axiom (ex nihilo nihil fit) and lay 
as such at the basis of every system of human device. So that it was 
froman accurate knowledge of the bounds of human knowledge, that 
the author of Hebrews says (xi : 3,) that the true doctrine of creation was 
purely one of faith. And this is our most emphatic proof text. We may 
add to it Rom. iv: 1 7; perhaps 1 Cor. i: 28; 2 Cor. iv: 6; Acts xvii: 28; Col. 
i: 1 7. The same meaning may be fairly argued for the word baea, Gen. i : 
l,from the fact that its sense there is absolutely unqualified or limited 
by any previous proposition, or reference to any material, and also from 
the second verse. The work of the first verse expressed by baea, left 
the earth a chaos. Therefore it connot contain the idea of fashioning, 
so that if you refuse to it the sense of an absolute production out cf 
nothing, you seem to leave it no meaning whatever. This truth also 
appears very strongly, from the contrast which is so often run by Scrip- 
ture between God's eternity, and the temporal nature of the creation. 
See Ps. xc : 2 ; Matt, xxv : 34 ; 2 Tim i : 9 ; Rev. i : 11; and espe- 
cially Prov. viii : 23-26, "nor the highest part of the dust of the 
world." It is hard to see how it could be most strongly asserted that 
not only was the organization, but the very material of the world as yet 
all non-existent. 

This insceutable, but not impossible. — Sow almighty power brings 
substance into existence from absolute non-entity, our minds may not 
be able to conceive. Like so many other questions of ontology, it is 
too impalpable for the grasp of our understandings. As we have seen, 
the mind neither sees nor conceives substance, not even material; but 
only its attributes ; only, it is intuitively impelled to refer those attri- 
butes (of which alone it is cognizant) to some substratum as the substance 



168 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

in which they inhere. The entity itself being incomprehensible, it need 
not surprise us to find that its rise out of non-entity is so. The ancients, 
in this case, clearly confounded impossibility with incomprehensibility. 
There are three other schemes which offer us an alternative to this 
of an absolute creation ; that of the atomic philosophers, that of the 
Platonists, and that of the Pantheists. 

Atomic theory. Refutation. — The Atomic theory of the Universe 
advanced by Democritus and Leucippus, adopted by Epicurus and 
greatly opposed by Socrates and the Platonists, might be so stated, if 
freed from the mechanical technicalities of the Greeks, as to embrace 
as few absurdities as perhaps any possible anti-Christian system. That 
is, it has the merit of atheism, of making two or three gigantic false- 
hoods, assumed at the outset, supersede a whole train of minor absur- 
dities. Grant, say the atomists, the eternal existence of matter, in the 
state of ultimate atoms, endued by the necessity of nature, with these 
three eternal attributes, motion, a perpetual appetency to aggregation, 
and diversity of ultimate form, and you have all that is necessary, to 
account for universal organization. Now, without dwelling on the 
metaphysical objection (whose soundness is questionable,) that necessary 
existence is inconsistent with diversity of form, these obvious reasons 
show that the postulates are not only unproved {proof I have never seen 
attempted) but impossible. First : motion is not a necessary attribute 
of matter; but on the contrary, it is indifferent to a state of rest or 
motion, requiring power to cause it to pass out of either state into the 
opposite. Second : Intelligent contrivance could never be generated 
by mere necessary, mechanical aggregations of material atoms ; but re- 
mains still an effect without a cause. Third : the materialistic account 
of human and other spirits, which this theory gives, is impossible. 

Platonic scheme. Refutation. — The Pantheistic theory has been 
already refuted, as space would allow, in Lecture II, which see. ' The 
Platonic is certainly attended with fewest absurdities, and best satisfied 
the demands of thinking minds not possessed of Revelation. Starting 
with the maxim ex nihilo nihil fit, it supposes two eternal substances, 
the sources of all that exists; the spiritual God, and chaotic matter; 
the spirits of demi-gods, and men being emanations of the former, and 
the material universe having been fashioned out of the latter, in time, 
through the agency of the nous or demiouegos. The usual arguments 
against the eternity of the unorganized matter of the universe, have 
been weighed in the Second Lecture, and many of them found wanting, 
(which see). I now aim only to add to what is there said, such consid- 
erations as human reason seems able to advance solidly against this doc- 
trine. You will remember that I there argued, 1st. From the testimony 
of the human race itself, and 2d, from the recency of population, his- 
tory, traditions, arts, &c, on the earth, against the eternity of its 
organized state. To these we may add : 3d. If matter unorganized was 
eternal, it must have been self-existent, and hence, whatever attributes 
it had from eternity must have been absolutely necessary. Hence there 
was a necessary limitation on the power of God, in working with such 
a material; and it may be that He did not make what He would have 
preferred to make, but only did the best He could under the circum- 
stances. (Indeed the Platonist, knowing nothing of the doctrine of a 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 169 

fall, accounted for all the imperfections of the Universe by the refrac- 
tory nature of matter.) But God assures us that He is sovereign and 
absolute, and that all creatures are absolutely dependent on His will. 
4th. The elementary properties of matter, which on this theory, must 
have been eternal and necessary, have an adaptalion to God's purposes 
in creation, that displays intelligent contrivance just as clearly as any 
organized thing can. But matter is unintelligent; this design must 
have had a cause. 5th. The production of spiritual substance out of 
nothing is, we presume, just as hard to account for as material sub- 
stance. Hence, if an instance of the former is presented, the doctrine 
of the eternity of the Universe may as well be surrendered. But our 
souls each present such an instance. No particle of evidence exists 
from consciousness or recollection, that they pre-existed, and every- 
thing is against the notion that they are scintillations of God's sub- 
stance. They began to exist : at least man has no knowledge whatever 
of any other origin ; and by the rule : Be ignotis idem quasi de non ex- 
istentibus, any other origin is out of the debate. They were produced 
out of nothing. In conclusion, it may be said that, if the idea of the 
production of something out of nothing is found to be not impossible, 
as we think; when we have supposed an Almighty Creator, we have 
cause enough to account for everything, and it is unecessary to suppose 
another. 

No creature can be enabled to create. — 3. The question whether 
a creature can receive, if God choose, delegated power to create, has 
been agitated between the Orthodox and some of the Romanists, (who 
would fain introduce a plea for the making of a Saviour by the priest, 
in the pretended miracle of the mass) and the old Arians and Socin- 
ians, who would thus evade the argument for Christ's proper divinity, 
from the evident ascription to Him of works of creation. We believe, 
not only that the noblest of finite creatures is incapable of exercising 
creative power proper, of his own motion ; but of receiving it by 
delegation from God, so that the latter is one of those natural impossi- 
bles which it would argue imperfection in omnipotence to be capable of 
doing. 

a.) God, in a multitude of places, claims creation as His characteristic 
work, by which His Godhead is manifested, and His superiority shown 
to all false gods and idols; Is. xl: 12; xliv : 7,24; xl : 12, 13, 18, 
28 ; Job ix : 8 ; Jer. x : 11, 12 ; Is. xxxvii : 16 ; Ps. xcvi : 5. Thus 
Creator comes to be one of God's names. 

b.) To bring any thing, however small, out of non-existence is so 
far above man's capabilities, that he cannot even conceive how it can be 
done. In order that a work may be conceivable or feasible for us, it 
must have subject and agent. Man has no faculty which can be directed 
upon nonentity, in any way, to bring anything out of it. Indeed, how- 
ever small the thing thus produced out of nothing, there is an exertion 
of infinite power. The distance to be passed over between the two is 
a fathomless gulf to every fiaits mind. 

c.) To make any one thing, however limited,might require infinite powers 
of understanding. For however simple, a number of the laws of nature 
would be involved in its structure ; and the successful construction 
would demand a perfect acquaintance with thoso laws, at least, in their 
infinite particularity, -and in all their possible combinations, and with 



HO SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the substance as well as attributes. Consider any of the constructions 
of man's shaping and joining materials God has given him, and this 
will be found true. The working of miracles by prophets, apostles, &c, 
offer no instance to the contrary, because it is really God who works 
the miracle, and the human agent only announces, and appeals to the 
interposition of divine power. See Acts iii : 12. 

The Creative week. — 5. If we suppose that Gen. i : 1 7 describes a 
previous production in a time left indefinite, of the heavens and the 
matter of the earth, then the work of the first of the sis days will be the 
production of light. It nay seem unreasonable at the first glance, that 
light should be created, and should make three days before the sun, its 
great fountain at present, was formed. But all the researches of 
modern optics go more and more to overthrow the belief that light is 
a literal emanation from the sun. What it is, whether a substance, or 
an affection of other substance, is still unknown. Hence it cannot be 
held unreasonable, that it should have existed before the sun ; nor that 
God should have regulated it in alternations of day and night. On 
the second day the atmosphere seems to have been created, (the ex- 
panse) or else disengaged from chaos, and assigned its place around the 
surface of the earth. This, by sustaining the clouds, separated the 
waters from thewaters. The work of the third clay was to separate 
the terrestial waters from the dry ground, to assign each their bounds, 
and to stock the vegetable kingdom with its genera of trees and plants. 
The fourth day was occupied with the creation, or else the assignment 
to their present functions, of sun, moon and stars. And henceforth 
these became the ehief depositories, or else propagators of natural light. 
The fifth day witnessed the creation of all oviparous animals, including 
the three classes of fishes, reptiles and birds. The sixth day God 
created the terrestial animals of the higher orders, now known as 
mammalia, and man, His crowning work. 

6. The view of modern geology explained. — For about the last 
sixty years, as you are aware, modern geologists have taught, with great 
unanimity, that the state of the structures which compose the earth's 
Crust show it to be vastly more than 6,000 years old. To explain this 
supposed evidence to you. I may take for granted your acquaintance 
with the classes into which they distribute the rocks and soils that form 
the earth, so far as man has pierced it. Lowest in order and earliest 
in age, are the primary rocks, all azoic. Second come the secondary 
rocks, containing remains of life palaeozoic and meio-etie. Third come 
the tertiary rocks and clays, containing the pleiocene fossils. Fourth 
come the alluvia, containing the latest, and the existing genera of life, 
Now the theory of the geologists is, that only the primary azoic rocks 
are original ; the rest are all results of natural causes of disintegration, 
and deposition, since God's creation. And hence: that creation must 
have been thousands of ages before Adam. 

a.) Because the primary rocks are all very hard, were once liquid from 
heat, and evidently requited from gradual cooling. 

b.) The average thickness of the made rocks and earths they estimate 
from six to ten miles ; whence vast ages were required to disintegrate 
so much material from rocks so hard. 

c.) The positions of these made strata, or layers, indicate long series 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 171 

of changes since they were deposited, as upheavals, dislocations, de? 
pressions, subsequent re-dissolvings. 

d.)They contain 30,000 species and more of fossils remains of life, 
vegetable and animals : of which, not only are whole genera now extinct, 
but were wholly extinct ages before another cluster ef genera were first 
created ; which are now extinct also. And the vast quantities of these 
fossils, as shells in some limestone, remains of vegetation in vast coal 
beds, &c, &c, point to a long time, for their gradual accumulation. 

f.) There are no human fossils found with these remains of earlier 
life, whence they were pre-Adamite. 

Last, Since the last great geologic changes in the strata of the made 
rocks, changes have been produced in them by natural and gradual 
causes, which could not have been made in 6,000 years, as whole deltas 
of alluvial mud deposited, e. g., Louisiana, deep channels dug out by 
rivers, as Niagara from Lake Ontario to the falls, water worn caves in 
the coast lines, and former coast lines of countries, e. g., Great Britian, 
which are rock-bound. 

Attempts to reconcile this with Moses. 1. Chalmers' scheme. — 
Modern divines, too facile as I conceive, usually yield this as a demon- 
stration ; and offer one of two solutions to rescue Moses from the ap- 
pearance of mistake. 1. Drs. Chalmers, Hitchcock, Hodge, &c, sup- 
pose Gen. i : 1 and 2, 1st clause, to describe God's primeval creative 
act ; which may have been separated by thousands of ages from Adam's 
day: and in that vast interval, occurred all those successive changes, 
which geologists describe as pre-Adamite, and then lived and died all 
those extinct genera of animals and vegetables. The scene had been 
closed, perhaps ages before, by changes which left the earth's surface 
void, formless and dark. But all this Moses passes over with only one 
word ; because the objects of a religious revelation to man were not 
concerned with it. The second verse only describes how God took the 
earth in hand, at this stage, and in six days gave it the order, the genera 
of plants and animals, and last, the human race, which now possess it. 

The geological objections which Hugh Miller, its ablest Christian 
assailant, brings may be all summed up in this: That the fossils show 
there was not such a clean cutting off of all the genera of plants and 
animals at the close of the pre-Adamite period, and re-stocking of the 
earth with the existing genera; because many of the existing co-exist 
with the prevalent pleiocene genera, in the tertiary rocks, and many of 
those again, with the older genera, in the palaeozoic rocks, This does 
not seem at all conclusive, because it may have suited God, at the close 
of the pre-Adamite period, to suffer the extinction of all, and then to 
create, along with the totally different new genera, some bearing so close 
a likeness to some extinct genera, as to be indistinguishable by their 
fossils. 

Exegetical difficulties. — The exegetical objections are chiefly 
these. 1. That the sun, moon and light were only created at the Ada- 
mic period. Without these there could have been neither vegetable nor 
animal life before. 2. We seem to learn from Gen. i : 31 : il : 17-19; 
Rom. v: 12; viii : 19-22, that all animal suffering and death came 
upon our earth as a punishment for man's sin ; which our conceptions 
of the justice and benevolence of God seem to confirm. To the 1st 
the common answer is, that the chaotic condition into which the earth 



1 72 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

had fallen just before the Adaraic period, had probably shut out all 
influ nces of the Heavenly bodies ; and that the making of sun, moon, 
&c, and ordaining them for lights, &c, probably only means their ap- 
parent creation ; i. e., their re-introduction to the earth. To the 2d 
it is replied, that the proper application of the texts attributing all 
terr estrial disorder and suffering to man's fall, is only to the earth as 
cot emporary with man ; and that we are too ignorant of God's plan, 
and of what sin of rational free agents may, or may not have occurred 
on the pre-Adamite earth to dogmatize about it. These replies seem 
plausible, and may possibly be tenable. This mode of reconciling 
geology to Moses, is certainly the least objectionable and most respect- 
able. 

The theory of six symbolic days. — The second mode of reconcili- 
ation, now made most fashionable by H. Miller, Tayler Lawis, &c, 
supposes that the word yom, day, in the account of creation, does not 
mean a natural day of 24 hours, but is symbolical of a vast period ; 
during which God was, by natural laws, carrying on changes in the 
earth's surface and its inhabitants. And they regard the passage as an 
account of a sort of symbolic vision, in which God gave Moses a pic- 
ture, in six tableaux, of these six vast series of geologic and creative 
changes : so that the language is, to use Dr. Kurtz' (of Dorpat) fantas- 
tic idea, a sort of prophecy <if the past, and is to be understood accord- 
ing to the laws of prophetic symbols. This they confirm by saying 
that Moses makes three days before he has any sun or moon to make 
them ; that in Gen. ii : 4, the word is used for something other than a 
naturul day ; and that it is often used in Hebrew as a general and un- 
defined term for season or period. Miller also argues, that geology 
reveals the same succession of fossils which Moses describes ; first 
plants, then monstrous fishes and reptiles and birds, (all oviparous), 
then quadrupeds and mammalia, and last, man. 

Objections. — The insuperable objections to this scheme are ; that 
some of the best informed geologists deny that succession of fossils 
which Miller asserts; declaring that plants do not predominate in the 
palaeozoic fossils ; but crustaceous animals. Unless Gen. 1 is a plain 
narrative, there can be no faith put in Scripture language, and there is 
no solid system of exegesis. The word yom must mean natural day, 
because it is composed of evening and morning. No other meaning 
gives sense and consistency to the reason assigned from the six days 
work, for the Sabath institution, Gen. ii : 2,3; Exod. xx : 11. (The 
latter surely, is not a symbolic tableau, representing a prediction of a 
past event ?) Last, The attributing of the changes ascribed to each 
day by Moses, to the slow operation of natural causes, as Miller's 
theory does, tramples upon the proper scope of the passage, and the 
meaning of the word "create ;" which teach us this very truth espe- 
cially; that these things were not brought about by natural law at all, 
but by a supernatural divine exertion, directly opposed thereto. See 
Gen. ii : 5. If Moses does not here mean to teach us that in the time 
named by the six "days" (whatever it may be), God was employed in 
miracuously creating and not naturally "growing" a world, I see not 
how language can be construed. This decisive difficulty is wholly 
separate from the questions about the much debated word, "day," in 
this passage. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 173 

APPENDIX. 

Without presuming to teach technical geology (for which I profess 
no qualification ; and which lies, as I conceive, wholly outside the func- 
tions of the Church teacher), I wish, in dismissing this subject, to give 
you some cautions and instructions touching its relations with our re- 
vealed science. 

This sur ject must concern Theologians. — 1 . There must always be a 
legitimate reason for church teachers adverting to this subject : because 
geology is virtually a theory of cosmogony, and cosmogony is but the 
doctrine of creation, which is one of the modes by which God reveals 
Himself to man, and one of the prime articles of every revealed the- 
ology. Were not all the ancient cosmogonies but natural theologies ? 
Not a few modern geologists resent the animadversions of theologians, 
as of an incompetent class, impertinent and ignorant. Now I very 
freely grant that it is a very naughty thing for a parson, or a geologist, 
to profess to know what he does not know. But all logic is but logic ; 
and after the experts in a special science have explained their premises 
in their chosen way, it is simply absurd to forbid any other class of 
educated men to understand and judge their deductions. What else 
was the object of their publications? Or do they intend to practise 
that simple dogmatism, which in us religious teacher they would so 
spurn ? Surely when geologists currently teach their systems to boys 
in colleges, it is too late for them to refuse the inspection of an edu- 
cated class of men\ When Mr. Hugh Miller undertook, by one night's 
lecture, to convince a crowd of London Mechanics of his pet theory of 
the seven geologic ages, it is too late to refuse the criticism of theolo- 
gians trained in philosophy 1 

2. Westminster Confession inconsistent with it. — I would beg 
you to notice how distinctly either of the current theories contradicts 
the standards of our Church. See Conf. of Faith, ch. iv, §1. Larger 
Cat., que. 15, 120. If your minds are made up to adopt either of these 
theories, then it seems to me that common honesty requires of you two 
things : to advertise ycur presbyteries, when you apply for license and 
ordination, of your disbelief of these articles: that they may judge 
whether they are essential to our system of doctine : and second; to 
use your legitimate influences, as soon as you become church rulers, to 
have these articles expunged from our standards as false. 

3. Deliberation enjoined. — Let me urge upon you a wiser attitude 
and temper towards the new science than many have shown, among 
the ministry. Some have shown a jealousy and uneasiness, unworthy 
of the stable dignity of the cause of inspiration. These apparent 
difficulties of geology are just such as science has often paraded against 
the Bible ; bat God's word has stood firm, and every true advance of 
science has only redounded to its honour. Christians, therefore, can 
afford to bear these seeming assaults with exceeding coolness. Other 
pretended theologians have been seen advancing, and then as easily re- 
tracting new-fangled schemes of exegesis, to suit new geologic hypo- 
theses. The Bible has often had cause here to cry, "Save me from my 
friends." Scarcely has the theologian announced himself as sure of his 
discovery that this is the correct way to adjust Revelation to the preva 
lent hypotheses of the geologists, when these mutable gentlemen chang 



m SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

their hypothesis totally. The obsequious divine exclaims: "Well I 
was in error then ; but now I have certainly the right exposition to re- 
concile Moses to the geologists." And again the fickle science changes 
its ground. What can be more degrading to the authority of Revela- 
tion ! As remarked in a previous lecture, unless the Bible has its own 
ascertainable and certain law of exposition, it cannot be a rule of faith ; 
our religion is but rationalism. I repeat, if any part of the Bible 
must wait to have its real meaning imposed upon it by another, aud a 
human science, that part is at least meaningless and worthless to our 
souls. Tt must expound itself independently ; making other sciences 
ancillary, and not dominant over it. 

4. Popular terms to be expected; in Bible, Reasons. But not 
applicable to cosmogony. — It should be freely conceded that it was 
not Grod's purpose in giving the Bible to foreshadow the scientific 
rationale of natural 'phenomena. Its object is theological. And the 
Bible is, in this respect, a strictly practical book. Hence, it properly 
speaks of those phenomena as they appear, and uses the popular phrases, 
"sun rises," "sun sets," "sun stood still," &c, just as any other than 
a pedantic astronomer would when not expressly teaching astronomy. 
Hence, we admit, that the attempt made by Rome and the Reformers 
to array the Bible against the Copernican System was simply foolish. 
The Bible only professed to speak of the apparent phase of the facts ; 
the theory of the astronomer professed to give the non-apparent, scien- 
tific mechanism of the facts. So far as geology does the analogous 
thing, we should have no quarrel with it. But how far does this con- 
cession go? When Moses seems to say that God created ^he world 
and its inhabitants out of nothing about six thousand years ago, in six 
natural days, are we at liberty to treat him as we do Joshua when he 
speaks of the sun as standing still? I think not. First; Moses' ref- 
erence to the facts of creation is not, like Joshua's reference to the 
astronomical event, merely incidental to a narrative of human history, 
but is a statement of what is as much a theological doctrine as a nat- 
ural fact, introduced by him for its own theological purpose. Second ; 
Joshua's language is defended as being true to the apparent phase of 
the event. But creation had no apparent phase; for the simple reason 
that it had no human spectators. There is no popular language about 
world-making, conformed to the seeming phenomenon, as we have about 
the moving and setting suns which we daily seem to behold ; for none 
of us, of any generation, have witnessed the exterior appearances 
of world-making. Hence, I must believe that we are not authorized 
to class the declarations of Moses here, with those of these oft cited 
passages. 

5. Burden of Proof rests on Geologists. — It is an all-important 
point that, if debate arises between a geologic hypothesis, and the fair 
and natural meaning of the Bible touching cosmogony, the geologist 
must bear the burden of proof. We are entitled to claim this, because 
the inspiration of the Scriptures is in prior possession of the field, in 
virtue of its own independent historical, prophetic, internal and spirit- 
ual evidences, and of the immense and irreparable stake which every 
awakened soul has in its truth. Hence, the geologist does not dislodge 
the Bible, until he has constructed his own independent, and exclusive, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 175 

and demonstrative evidence that his hypothesis must be the true one, 
and the only true one. Has the science ever done this? This logical 
obligation geologists perpetually forget. They perpetually substitute a 
"maybe" for a "must be." As soon as they hit upon a hypothesis 
which, it appears, may satisfy the known facts, they leap to the con- 
clusion that it is the obviously, the only true one. But now, our 
position is not approached until such a complete, and exclusive demon- 
stration is made. We are under no obligation, in order to defend 
ourselves, to substantiate another hypothesis by geologic reasoning ; 
our defence is complete, when we show by such argument that their 
hypothesis comes short of an exclusive and perfect demonstration. It 
requires, as yet, little knowledge to show this ; when the leading geol- 
ogists are still differing between themselves, touching the igneous, the 
aqueous, the gradual, and the sudden systems ; when effects are so 
hastily and confidently ascribed to one species of natural agency, which 
may, very possibly, have been effected by it, or by one of several other 
possible agencies ; when we see the greatest names assuming as pre- 
mises for important deductions, statements which are corrected by the 
practical observation of plain men ; from the oversight of important 
questions as to the consistency and feasibility of their theories of cos- 
mogony, with observed facts; and last, from the well known fact that 
the most truly scientific are most cautious in asserting any such scheme 
with confidence. 

6. Usual inference of cause from observed resemblances. — I 
have reserved the most vital point to the last. It is this : How far 
must the admitted fact of a creation by God supercede the logical 
value of inferences from natural appearances ? Geologists infer thus : 
"I see a given natural force producing a given structure.. I find a 
similar structure existing from before the times of human observation. 
But I infer that this natural force must have produced this too, in the 
same way." Now, I assert, that this is exactly, for any one save an 
Atheist, one of those inductions "per enumerationem simplicem," as 
Lord Bacon terms them, which it was one of his esspecial glories to ex- 
plode as utterly inadequate for any demonstration. He proves that it 
can never raise more than a meagre probability of truth, in the absence 
of a better canon of induction. To explain : Shallow observers had 
been saying, "I see the effect B produced a number of times by the 
cause A, as far as is apparent. Hence, I conclude, that in every other 
case where B appears, A was its cause." Now, as Bacon and all other 
sensible writers on the inductrve logic, teach us, the inference is worth- 
less, until it is proved (in some other way) that no other cause capable 
of producing B was present in any case, save A. What can be plainer 
to common sense? Now, no man who is unwilling to take the blank, 
Atheistic ground, can deny that in the cases in hand, another adequate 
cause may have been present, as soon as we go back prior to historical 
testimony, namely : almighty, creative power. How on earth can the 
inference described prove anything as to the absence of that power, 
when the inference is worthless until after that question is settled by 
other authorities? 

This invalid as against a Creator. — To apply this : Our modern 
geologists find that wherever stratified rocks are formed, since the era 



176 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

of human observation, the case is sedimentary action. They jump to 
the conclusion that therefore the same natural cause produced all the 
sedimentary rocks, no matter how much older than Adam. I reply : 
"Yes, provided it is proved beforehand, that no other adequate cause 
was present.'''' Unless you are an Atheist, you must admit that another 
cause, creative power, may have been present ; and present anywhere 
prior to the ages of authentic historical testimony. Thus, the admission 
of the theistic scheme absolutely cuts across and supersedes all these 
supposed natural arguments for the origin and age of these structures. 

Because, no creation could be devoid of seeming marks of NA-, 
turk. — I pray you to consider how perfect is my proof of the invalid- 
ity, the worthlessness of this sort of arguing. If its principle is valid, 
then it is impossible that any mind, in any possible circumstances 
could admit a proof of a Creator. For it is impossible to suppose any 
natural work of a Creator's hand, which would not seem to contain 
just the grounds of this pretended geologic argument for denying God's 
agency in it. For if God produced by a creation, a structure designed 
to be subjected after its creation to a natural law, would He not have 
produced it naturalX Of course. Suppose, for instance, the first oak 
tree, parent of all subsequent generations of that species ; the first 
horse, progenitor of all subsequent generations of horses. That first 
oak, first horse, must have had the whole nature of its progeny. 
Else, how could it become the natural head of its species? What is 
the scientific definition of specific unity 1 The properties which con- 
stitute these species are just those which descend by propagation. It 
is, therefore, a demonstration strictly scientific, that this first created 
supernatural head of the species must have been created strictly natural, 
endued with a full specific unity with its natural progeny. But, if 
the geologic argument were worth anything, it would prove from that 
Very specific natural unity, that this created first head of the species 
could not have been created, but must have grown like all the later of 
its species. I repeat, unless you are an Atheist my argument must be 
conclusive to your mind. 

Illustration from Paradise, &c. — As it is most important, let us 
illustrate it. Suppose, for argument's sake, that the popular under- 
standing of the creation of Adam's body and of the trees of paradise 
is true. But now a naturalist of our modern school investigates affairs. 
He finds towering oaks, with acorns on them ! Acorns do not form by 
nature in a day; some oaks require two summers to mature them. But 
worse than this : his Natural History has taught him that one summer 
forms but one ring in the grain of a tree's stock. He cuts down one of 
the spreading monarchs of the garden, and counts a hundred rings. 
So he concludes the garden and the tree must be a hundred years 
old, and that Adam told a monstrous fib, in stating that they were 
made last week. Yet Adam was right ; for the creative act ex- 
plained all. After nine hundred and thirty years, he visits the ven- 
erable tomb of the Father of all the living, and learns from his heir, 
Seth, how that his father sprang, at the bidding of God, out of the 
dust, an adult, fully formed man. The naturalists takes up a leg-bone 
of Adam's skeleton : he finds that its size, density and solidity show an 
adult growth. He saws off a section. He subjects a portion to his 
chemical solvents, and polishes down another to a translucent film, and 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. Ill 

subject it to his microscope. He says : "I perceive here the cellular 
structure of geletin, which once formed the incipient bone of the foetus, 
and these cells I now find filled with the deposite of proto-phosphate of 
lime, giving to it its stony strength and hardness. But 1 know that 
nature only introduces this earth gradually, as the person grows from 
foetus to adult. Whence, I learn that this specimen, like his children, 
grew during a period of twenty years ; and the myth of his son, Seth, 
concerning his instantaneous arrival at an adult age, is wholly unphil- 
osophical." Yet, Seth was right and the naturalist wrong. For, to 
say nothing of the inspired testimony, if this natural argument proves 
that Adam was once an infant, and had a father, it would equally prove 
the same of him, and of his father. So that we should have an infinite 
series of human fathers, extending back to all eternity. But such a 
series philosophy herself shows, is impossible. 

Naturalness in created things necessary to adapt them to 
natural law. — To pass to the inanimate creation, it is equally rea- 
sonable to say that, manifestly, a wise God, creating its structures (if 
there is any creator) with the purpose of subjecting them to the influ- 
ence and development of natural law, would create them natural. For 
otherwise, they would not be adapted to their end. If they had no 
traits of the natural, as they came from God's hand, they would be in- 
capable of becoming parts of a system under natural law. I repeat 
then, that the admission of the possibility of a creation destroys the 
value of every analogy to prove the date and mode of the production. 
The creative act (which, if it ever occurred, may have occurred at any 
date, when once we get back of historical testimony) has utterly super- 
seded and cut across all such inferences. 

Argument just, as against exclusion of Creator. — This ar- 
gument is usually dismissed by Geologists with a sort of summary con- 
tempt, or with a grand outcry of opposition. It does indeed cut deep 
into the seductive pride of their science, sweeping off at one blow that 
most fascinating region, the infinite past. It is urged, for instance, 
that my argument would subvert, the foundations of all natural science. 
They exclaim, that to concede this would be to surrender the whole or- 
ganon of scientific discovery. I answer, no. Within the domain of 
time, the known past of human history, where its testimony proves 
the absence of the supernatural, the analogical induction is per- 
fectly valid. And there is the proper domain of natural science. In 
that field, their mothed of reasoning is a useful org anon, and a legiti- 
mate ; let them use it there, to the full, for the good of man. But in 
the unknown eternity of the past, prior to human history, it has no 
place ; it is like the mariner's compass carried into the stellar spaces. 
That compass has a known attraction for the poles of this globe ; and 
therefore on this globe, it is a valued guide. But away in the region of 
Sirius, where we know not whether the spheres have poles, or whether 
they are magnetic, it is naught. He who should follow it would be a 
madman. 

Objection from Fossils answered. — Another objection, supposed 
to be very strong, is drawn from the fossil remains of life. The geol- 
ogists say triumphantly, that however one might admit my view as to 
the mere strata, it would be preposterous when applied to the remains 
of plants and animals buried in these strata, evidently alive thousands 



178 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

of ages ago. The reply to this is very plain, in two ways. First : 
How is it proved that it was thousands of ages ago that these fossil 
creatures, now buried in the strata, were alive? Only by assuming the 
gradual, sedimentary origin of all the strata! So that the reasoning 
runs in a circle. Second : Concede once (I care not where in the un- 
known past) an almighty Creator of infinite understanding, (as you must 
if you are not as Atheist,) and then both power and motive for the 
production of these living structures at and after a supernatural crea- 
tion become infinitely possible. It would be an insane pride of mind, 
which should conclude that, because it could not comprehend the mo- 
tive for the production, death, and entombment of all these creatures 
under such circumstances, therefore it cannot be reasonable for the 
Infinite Mind to see such a motive. So that my same formula applies 
here also. Once concede an Infinite Creator, and all inferences as to 
the necessarily natural origin of all the structures seen, are fatally 
sundered. 

Tendencies of Geologists atheistic. — Again ; why should the 
Theistic philosopher desire to push back the creative act of God to the 
remotest possible age, and reduce His agency to the least possible 
minimum, as is continually done in these speculations? What is gained 
by it? Instead of granting tha God created a kosmos, a world, they 
strive continually to show that He created only the rude germs of a 
world, ascribing as little as possible to God, and as much as possible 
to natural law. Cui bono ; if you are not hankering after Atheism? 
Is a completed result any harder for infinite powers than a germinal 
one ? What is natural law ; and what its source ? It originated in 
the creative power, and is maintained, energized, and regulated by the 
perpetual providence of God. Do you crave to push God away, as far 
as possible? It does'nt help you to say, natural law directed the for- 
mation of this mass of marble, instead of supernatural creation ; for 
God is as near and as infinite in His common natural, as in His first 
supernatural working. 

Illustrated by Nebular Hypothesis. — But if you must persist 
in recognizing nothing but natural forces, wherever you see a natural 
analogy, I will show you that it will land you, if you are consistent, 
no where short of absolute atheism. Suppose that nebular theory of 
the origin of the solar system were true, (which the anti-Christian, 
La Place, is said to have suggested as possible, and which so many of 
our nominal Christians have adopted, without proof, as certain ; after 
Lord Rosse's telescope had desolved the only shadow of a probability 
for it, in resolving the larger nebulae.) An observer from some other 
system, fully imbued with the principles of modern science comes to 
inspect, at the stage that he finds only a vast mass of incandescent vapor, 
rotating from west to east around an axis of motion. If he uses the 
confident logic of our geologists, he must reason thus : " Matter is 
naturally inert : momentum must come from impact ; therefore, this 
rotary motion which I now behold must be the result of some prior 
force, either mechanical, electrical, or some other. And again, I see 
only vapoi'. Vapor implies evaporation ; and sensible heat suggests 
latent heat, rendered sensible either by electrical or chemical action, 
or compression. There must, therefore, have been a previous, different, 
and natural condition of this matter now votilized, heated, and rota- 



0¥ LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 179 

ting The geologists of the 19th century, therefore, will be mistaken 
in calling this the primitive condition of the system." Before each 
first, then, there must still he another first. This is, therefore, the 
eternity of Naturalism — it is Atheism. And such is the perpetual ani- 
mus of material science, especially in our day. 

Creation had a moral end. — In fine, if that account of the origin 
of the universe, which theology gives us, is to be heeded at all, the 
following appears the most philosphical conception of a creation : That 
God, in producing a world which His purposes required to pass under 
the immediate domain of natural laws, would produce it with just the 
properties which those laws perpetuate and develope. And here ap- 
pears a consideration which brings theology and cosmogony into unison. 
What was God's true end in the creation of a material, world? Reason 
and Scripture answer : To furnish a stage for the existence and action 
of a moral and rational creature. The earth was made for man to in- 
habit. As the light would be but darkness, were there no Eye to see, 
so the moral design of the world would be futile without a human 
mind to comprehend it, and praise its Maker. Now, such being God's 
end in creation, it seems much more reasonable to suppose that He 
would produce at once the world which He needed for His purpose, 
rather than spend hundreds of thousands of years in growing it. 



LECTURE XXII. 



SYLLABUS. 

ANGELS. 

_ 1. Prove the existence and personality of Angels ; and show the probable 
time of their creation. 

Turrettin, Loc. vii, ques. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7. Calvin's Inst., Bk. I, ch. xiv. 
Dick, Lect. 38. Knapp, sect, lviii, lix. 

2. What is revealed of their numbers, nature, poioers and ranks ? 

Turrett. as above. Dick and Calv. as above. Knapp as above and sect, 
lxi. 

3. In what moral state were they created, and under what covenant were they 
placed ? How did this probation result ? 

Turrettin, Loc. vii, que. 4. Loc. ix, que. 5. Loc. iv. que. 8, § 1-8. Dick, 
Lect. 39. Calv. as above. 

4. What are the offices of the good angels ? Have the saints individual guar- 
dian angels? 

Turrett, Loc. vii, que. S. Dick, Lect. 38. Calv. as above. Knapp, 
Lect. Ix. 

5. Prove the personality and headships of Satan, and the personal existence 
of his angels, 

Calvin as above, Dick as above. Knapp, Lect. Ixii, lxiii. 



180 SYLLABUS AKD NOTES 

6. What do the Scriptures teach as to the powers of evil angels over natural 
elements and animal bodies ; over the minds and hearts of men ; in demoniacal 
possessions of ancient and modern times ; in witchcraft and magic, and of the 
grade of guilt of wizards, &c. 

Turrett, Loc. vii, que. 5. Loc. ix, que. 5. Loc. iv, que. 8, § 18. Calv. 
Inst., Bk. I, ch. xiv, § 13-20, Ridgeley, que. 19. Knapp, Lect. lxiv to 
lxvi. Commentaries. 

7. What personal Christian duties result from this exposure to the assaults 
of evil angels ? 

I. Personality op Angels. — Against ancient Saducees, who taught 
neither resurrection, angel nor spirit, (A.cts xxiii : 8) and made the 
angels only good thoughts and motions visiting human breasts ; and 
our modern Saducees, among Rationalists, Socinians and Universalists, 
■who teach that they are impersonations of divine energies, or of good 
and bad principles, or of diseases and natural influences ; we prove the 
real, personal existence of angels thus ; The Scriptures speak of them as 
having all the acts and properties, which can characterize real persons. 
They were created by God, through the agency of the Son, Col. i : 16 ; 
Gen. ii : 1 ; Bxod. xx : 11. Have a nature, for Christ did not assume 
it, Heb. ii : 16. Are holy or unholy, Eev. xiv : 10. Love and rejoice, 
Luke xv: 10. Desire, 1 Pet. i: 12. Contend, Rev. xii : 7. Worship, 
Heb. i : 6. Go and come, Gen. xix : 1 ; Luke ix : 26. Talk, Zech. i : 
9 ; Luke i : 13 Have knowledge and wisdom, (finite) 2 Sam. xiv : 20 ; 
Matt, xxiv : 36. Minister in various acts, Matt, xiii : 29,49; Luke 
xvi : 22; Acts v: 19. Dwell with saints, who resemble them, in 
Heaven, Matt, xxii ; 30, &c. If all this language was not intended to 
assure us of their personal existence, then there is no dependence to be 
placed on the word of God, or the laws of its interpretation. 

The name angel (messenger) is indeed applied to ordinary messen- 
gers, Job i : 14; Luke vii : 24; to prophets, Is. xlii : 19; Mai. iii ; 1; 
to priests, Mai. ii : 7 ; to ministers of the Church, P\,ev. i ; 20, and to 
the Messiah, Mai. iii : 1 ; Is. lxiii : 9, &c, &c. But the other sense of 
personal and spiritual existences, is none the less perspicuous. They 
are called angels generally because they fulfill missions for God. 

Spiritual creatures possible. — The invisible and spiritual nature 
of these beings is no objection to the credibility of their existence to 
any except Atheists and materialists. True, we have no sensible ex- 
perience of their existence. Neither have we, directly, of our own 
souls, nor of God. If the existence of pure finite spirits is impossible, 
then man cannot be immortal ; but the death of the body is the death 
of the being. Indeed, analogy would rather lead us to infer the ex- 
istence of angels, from the almost numberless gradations of beings 
below man. Is all the vast gap between him and God a blank? 

Bate unknown. — To fix the date of the creation of angels is more 
difficult. The old opinion of orthodox reformers was, that their crea- 
tion was a part of the first day's work, a.) Because they, being in- 
habitants, or hosts (see Ps. ciii : 21 ; cxlviii : 2) of heaven, were 
created when the heavens were. But see Gee. i : 1 ; ii : 1 ; Exod. xx ; 
11. b.) Because Scripture seems to speak of all the past eternity 
" before the foundation of the world" as an unbroken infinity, in which 
nothing existed except the uncreated ; so that to speak of a Being as 
existing before that, is in their language, to represent Him as uncre- 



OF LECTURES. IN" THEOLOGY. 181 

ated. See Prov. viii : 22; Ps. xc : 2 ; Jno. i : 1. Now I concede 
that the including of the angels with the heavens, under the term 
hosts of them, is correct. But first, the angels were certainly already in 
existence when this earth was begun. See Job xxxviii : 7. Second : 
the "beginning" in which God made the heavens and the earth, Gen. 
i : 1, is by no means necessarily the first of the six creative days. Nor 
does Gen. ii : 1, ("Thus were finished," is an unnecessarily strong 
rendering of way'chullu,) prove it. Hence, third, it may be granted that 
the beginning of the creation of God's created universe may mark the 
dividing point between unsuccessive eternity, and successive time, and 
between the existence of the uncreated alone, and of the creature ; 
and yet it does not follow that this point was the first of the Mosaic 
days. Hence, it is best to say, with Calvin, that the age of the angels 
is unrevealed, except that they are older than the world and man. 

II. Qualities of the Angels ; Incorporeal? Whence the forms 
of their apparitions? — The angels are exceedingly numerous. Gen. 
xxxii: 2; Dan. vii : 10; Luke ii : 13; viii: 30; Matt. ' xxvi : 53; 
Heb. xii : 22. Their nature is undoubtedly spiritual, belonging gene- 
rally to that class of substances to which man's rational soul belongs. 
They are called tneumata. Heb. i: 13, 14, 7; Luke xx : 30; xxiv : 
39 ; Col. i : 16. This also follows from what we learn of their traits, 
as intelligent and voluntary beings, as invisible, except when they assum.e 
bodies temporarily, as inexpressibly quick in motion ; and as 'penetrable, 
so that they occupy the same space with matter, without displacing or 
being displaced by it. Several supposed objections to their mere spi- 
rituality have been mooted. One is, that they have, as we shall see, 
so much physical power. The answer is, that the ultimate source of all 
force is in spirits : our limbs only have it, as moved by our spirit's vo- 
litions. Another is, that if pure spirits they would be ubiquitous, 
because to suppose any substance possessed of locality must imply 
that it is defined by extension and local limits. But extension cannot 
be an attribute of spirit. I reply, that it must be possible for a spirit 
to have locality "definitely," though not "circumscriptively," because 
our consciousness assures us that our spirits are within the superficies 
of our body, in some true sense in which they are not elsewhere ; yet 
it is equally impossible for us to attribute dimension, either to our 
spirits or their thoughts. And just as really as our spirits pass through 
space, when our bodies move, so really angels change their locality, 
though far more swiftly, by an actual motion, through extension ; 
though not implying extension in the thing moved. Again, it is ob- 
jected : Angels are spoken of as having wings, figure, and often, human 
shape, in which they were sometimes, not merely visible, but tangible, 
and performed the characteristic material acts of eating and drinking. 
See Gen. xviii : 2, 5, 8 ; xix : 10, 16. On this it may be remarked 
that Scripture expressly assigns wings to no orders but cherubim and 
seraphim. We see Dan. ix : 21, and Kev. xiv : 6, speaking of angels, 
not cherubin and seraphim, as "flying." But this may be in the gen- 
eral sense of rapid motion ; not motion with wings. The purpose of 
these appearances is obvious, to bring the presence and functions of 
the angelic visitant under the scope of the senses of God's servants, 
for some particular purpose of mercy. Angelic apparations seem to 
have appeared under three circumstances — in dreams, in states of in- 



182 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

spired exstacy, and when the observer was in the usual exercise cf his 
senses. Only the latter need any explanation ; for the former cases 
are accounted for by the ideal impression made on the conception of 
the dreaming or exstatic mind by God. But in such cases as that of 
Gen. xviii and xix, we are bound to believe that these heavenly spirits 
occupied for the time, real, material bodies. Any other .opinion does 
violence at once to the laws of exegesis of Scripture language, and to 
the validity of our senses as inlets of certain and truthful perceptions. 
Whence then, those bodies 1 Say some, they were the actual bodies of 
living men, which the angels occupied, suppressing, for the nonce, the 
consciousness and personality of the human soul to which the body be- 
longed. Some, that they are material, but glorified substances, kept 
in Heaven, ready for the occasional occupancy of angels on their mis- 
sions ; as we keep a Sunday coat in our wardrobes. Some, that they 
were aerial bodies, composed of compacted atmosphere, formed thus 
for their temporary occupancy, by divine power, and then dissolved 
into air again. And still others that they were created by God for 
them, out of matter, as Adam's body was, and then laid aside. Where 
God has not seen fit to inform us, I think it best to have no opinion on 
this mysterious subject. The Scriptures plainly show us, that this in- 
corporation is temporary. 

The Angels intelligent agents. — The angels are intelligent and 
voluntary beings, as is most manifest, from their functions of praising, 
worshipping, teaching the prophets, and ministering to saints, and from 
their very spirituality : for thought is the characteristic attribute of 
Spirit. We naturally infer that as angels are incorporeal, they have 
neither senses, nor sensation, nor literal language. Since our senses 
are the inlets of all our objective knowledge, and the occasional causes 
of all mental action, we have no experience nor conception of a know- 
ledge without senses. But it does not seem unreasonable to believe 
that our bodies obstruct the cognitions of our souls, somewhat as im- 
prisoning one within solid walls does his communication with others ; 
that our five senses are the windows, pierced through this barrier, to 
let in partial perceptions ; and that consequently, the disembodied soul 
perceives and knows somehow, with vastly greater freedom and fulness, 
by direct spiritual apprehension. Yet all of the knowledge of angels 
is not direct intuition. No doubt much of it is mediate and deduc- 
tive, as is so much of ours ; for the opposite form of cognition can 
only be universal, in an infinite understanding. It is very clear also, 
that the knowledge of angels is finite and susceptible of increase. 
Marc, xiii: 32: Bph. iii: 10; 1 Pet. i ; 12; Dan. vdii : 16. Turret- 
tin's four classes of angelic kuowledge — natural, experimental, super- 
natural, and revealed — might, I think, be better arranged as their 
concreated, their acquired, and their revealed knowledge. It is, in fine, 
clear that their knowledge and wisdom are great. They appear, Dan. 
and Rev., as man's teachers, they are glorious and splendid creatures, 
and they enjoy more favour and communion from God. See also 2 
Sam. xiv : 20. 

Powerful. — They are also beings of great power ; passing over vast 
spaces with almost incredible speed. Dan. ix; 23, exercising porten- 
tous physical powers, 2 Kings xix ; 35 : Zech. xii : 8 ; Acts xii : 7, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 1S3 

10: Matt, xxviii : 2, and they are often spoken of as mighty beings, 
Ps. ciii : 20; Rev. x : 1, v: 2, and are spoken of as dunameis, prin- 
cipalities, &c, Eph. vi : 12 ; 2 Thes. i: 7. This power is undoubtedly 
always within God's control, and never truly supernatural, although 
superhuman. It seems to have extended at times, by God's permis- 
sion, to men's bodies, to diseases, to the atmostphere, and other ele- 
ments. 

Their Orders. — The romantic distribution of the angels into a hie- 
rarchy of three classes, and nine orders, borrowed by the Pseudo 
Dyonisius from the Platonizing Jews, need not be refuted here. It is 
supposed by many Protestants, that there are differences of grade 
among angels, (though what, we know not,) from the fact — a.) That 
Paul uses several terms to describe them, Col. i : 16 ; b.) That there 
is at least one superior angel among the evil angels; c. ) That we hear 
of an archangel, Michael; d.) That God's terrestrial works exhibit 
every where, gradations. 

Michael not Angel of Covenant. — If, as some suppose, Michael is 
identical with the Angel of the Covenant, the third of these conside- 
rations is removed. Their reasons are, that he is called the Archangel, 
and is the only one to whom the title is given ; that he is called the 
Prince, and great Prince, who stood for Israel, (Dan. x: 31 ; xii : 1,) 
and that he is seen, (Rev. xii : 7,) heading the heavenly war against 
Satan and his kingdom ; a function suited to none so well as to the 
Messiah. But it is objected, with entire justice, that his name (Who 
is as God?) is not any more significant of the Messiah than that of 
Michaiah, and is several times the name of a man — that he is one, 
" one of the chief princes." Dan. x : 13. That in Jude, he was under 
authority in his dispute over Moses' body, and that he is plainly dis- 
tinguished from Christ, (1 Thess. iv : 16,) where Christ descends from 
heaven with the voice of the archangel, and trump of God. 

Cherubim. What? — A more difficult question is, what were the 
cherubim mentioned, Gen. iii : 21 ; Exod. xxv : 18 ; 1 Kings vi : xxiii : 
Ps. xviii: 10; and most probably, under the name of seraphim, in Is. 
vi : 2; Ezek. x : 5, 7, &c. It is very evident, also, that the "living crea- 
tures, described in Ezekiel's vision, ch. i : 5, as accompanying the wheels, 
and sustaining the divine throne, were the same. Dr. Fairbairn, the 
most quoted of modern interpreters of types and symbols, teaches that 
the cherubim are not existences at all, but mere ideal symbols, repre- 
senting humanity redeemed and glorified. His chief argument, omitting 
many fanciful ones drawn from the fourfold nature, and their wings, 
&c, is: that they are manifestly identical with the zoe, of Rev. iv : 
6—8, which evidently symbolize, ch. v: 8-10, somehow, the ransomed 
church. The great objections are, that the identification is not certain, 
inasmuch as John's zoe had but one face each ; that there is no pro- 
priety in founding God's heavenly throne and providence on glorified 
humanity, as His immediate attendants ; but chiefly, that while it might 
consist with prophetic vision to make them ideal symbols, it utterly 
outrages the plain narrative of Gen. iii : 24. And the duty of the 
cherubim, there described, obstructing sinful man's approach to the 
tree of life, with a flaming sword, the symbol of justice, is one utterly 
unfitted to redeemed and glorified humanity. Hence, I believe, with 



184 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the current of older divines, that the cherubim are not identical with 
John's "living creatures," but are angels, like all the others, real, spir- 
itual, intelligent beings : and that when God was pleased to appear to 
Isaiah and Ezekiel in prophetic vision, they received temporarily these 
mixed forms, to be symbolical of certain traits of obedience, intelli- 
gence, strength, and swiftness, which they show as ministers of God's 
providence and worshippers of His upper sanctuary. (The etymology 
of the word is utterly obscure.) 

III. The Angel's 1st estate, their probation and issue thereof. 
That all these spiritual beings were created holy and happy, is evident 
from God's character, which is incapable of producing sin or misery ; 
see Gen. i ; 31; from the frequent use of the term holy angels, and 
from all that is revealed of their occupations and affections, which are 
pure, blessed and happy. The same truth is implied, in what is said, 
2 Pet. ii : 4, of "angels that sinned," and so were not spared, but cast 
down to hell, and Jude vi, of "angels that kept not their first estate." 
This first estate was, no doubt, in all, an estate of holiness and happi- 
ness. As to the change which has taken place in it, we are indeed left, 
mainly to inference by God's word ; but it is inference so well sup- 
ported by His attributes, and the analogy of man's case, that I feel a 
good degree of confidence in drawing it. A holy, intelligent creature, 
would owe service to God, with love and worship, by its natural rela- 
tion to Him. And while God would be under no obligations to such a 
creature, to preserve its being, or bestow a happy immortality, yet His 
own righteousness and benevolence would forbid His visiting external 
suffering on that creature, while holy. The natural relation then, be- 
tween such a creature and God, would be this : God would bestow per- 
fect happiness, just so long as the creature continued to render perfect 
obedience, and no longer. For both the natural and legal consequence of 
sin would be spiritual death. But it would seem that some of the angels 
are elect, and these are now confirmed in a state of everlasting holiness 
and bliss. For holiness is their peculiarity, their blessedness seems 
complete, and they are mentioned as sharing with man the heavenly 
mansions, whence we know glorified saints will never fall. On the other 
hand, another class of the angels have finally and irrevocably fallen into 
spiritual death. The inference from these facts would seem to be, that 
the angels, like the human race, have passed under the probation of a 
covenant of works. The elect kept it, the non-elect broke it ; the dif- 
ference between them being made, so far as God was the author of it, 
not by His efficacious active decree and grace, but by His permissive 
decree, in which both classes were wholly left to the freedom of their 
wills. God only determining by His -Providence the circumstances 
surrounding them, which became the occasional causes of their different 
choices, and limiting their conduct. On those who kept their proba- 
tion, through the efficacy of this permissive decree, God graciously 
bestowed confirmation in holiness, adoption, and inheritance in life 
everlasting. This, being more than a temporary obedience could earn, 
was of pure grace ; yet not through a Mediator : because the angels be- 
ing innocent, needed none. When this probation began, what was its 
particular condition, and when it ended, we know not ; except that the 
fall of Satan, and most probably that of his angels, preceded Adam's. 
Nor is the nature of the sin known. Some, from Mark iii : 29, suppose 



OP LECTURES m THEOLOGY. 185 

it was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Others, from 1 Tim. iii : 6, 
suppose it was pride : neither conclusively. Guessing is vain, where 
there is no key to a solution. It may very possibly be that pride was 
the sin, for it is one to which Satan's spiritual nature and exalted state 
might be liable. The great difficulty is how, in a will prevalently holy* 
and not even swayed by innocent bodily wants and appetites, and where 
there was not in the whole universe a single creature to entice to sin, 
the first wrong volition could have place. At the proper time I will 
attempt to throw on this what light is in my power. 

IV. ©ccupations of good angels. — The good angels are engaged* 
first, in the worship and adoration of God. Matt, xviii: 10; Rev. v: 
11. Second, God employs them in administering His gracious and 
providential government over the world. Under this head we may 
notice: a.) That they aided in the giving of Revelation* as the Law; 
Actsvii: 53; Gal. iii : 19, and many prophetic message^ and disclo- 
sures, as Dan. X; b.) They seem to have some concern in social and 
national events, procuring the execution of God's purposes; Dan. x : 
13. c>) They are employed to punish His enemies, as instruments of 
His righteous vengeance. 2Kingsxix; 35; Acts xii : 23; 1 Chrom 
xxi : 16. d.) They are sent forth to minister to those who shall be 
heirs of salvation. Heb. i: 14; Acts xii: 7; Ps. xci: 10-12. e.) 
They guide the departing souls of Christians home to their mansions 
in heaven. Luke xvi : 22. Last. They are Christ's agents in the 
general judgment and resurrection. Matt, xiii : 39 ; xxiv: 31 ; 1 Thes. 
iv: 17. 

How exercised ? — As to the exact nature of the agencies exerted 
for the saints by the ministering angels, Christians are perhaps not very 
well instructed, nor agreed. A generation ago, it was currently be- 
lieved that they communicated to their minds instructions important to 
their duty or welfare, by dreams, presentiments, or impressions. Of 
these, many Christians are now skeptical. It seems more certain that 
they exert an invisible superintendence over our welfare, in and under 
the laws of nature. Whether they influence our waking minds uncon- 
sciously by suggesting thoughts and feelings through our law of associ- 
ated ideas, is much debated. I see in it nothing incredible. The 
pleasing and fanciful idea of guardian angels is grounded on the fol- 
lowing scriptures: Dan. x: 13, 20; Matt, xviii: 10; Acts xii: 15. 
The most that these passages can prove is, that provinces and countries 
may have their affairs committed in some degree to the especial care of 
some of the higher ranks of angels : and that superstitious Jews sup- 
posed that Peter had his own guardian angel, who might borrow Peter's 
body for the purpose of an apparition. The idea has more support in 
New Platouism than in Scripture. 

V. Satan a Person. — Tbe personality of Satan and his angels is to 
be established by an argument exactly similar to that employed for the 
good angels. Almost every possible act and attribute of personality is 
ascribed to them ; so that we may say, the Scripture contains scarcely 
more proof of the existence of a personal God, than of a Devil. He 
speaks, goes, comes, reasons, hates, is judged, and is punished. See for 
instance, such passages as Matt, iv : 1-11 ; Jno. viii : 44 ; Job i: 6 to 
ii: 7. 



1S6 StLLABUS A^D notes' 

Scriptures induce over whole Bidle History the form of the 
two Rival Kingdoms. — There is no subject on which we may more 
properly remember that "There are more things in heaven and earth 
than are dreamed of in our philosophy." 

It is evidently the design of the Scriptures to make much of Satan 
and his work. From first to last, the favourite representation of the 
world's history is, that it is the arena for a struggle between two king' 
doms — Christ's and Satan's. Christ leads the kingdom of the good 
Satan that of the evil; though with different authorities and powers 
The headships of Satan over his demons is implied where they are 
called "his angels." He is also called Prince of Devils. Matt, xxv : 
41 ; ix: 34. Prince of the powers of the air, and Prince of darkness 
Eph. vi : 12. This pre-eminence he doubtless acquired partly by se^ 
ducing them at first, and probably confirmed by his superior powers, 
His dominion is compacted by fear and hatred of God, and common 
purposes of malice. It is by their concert of action that they seem 
to approach so near to ubiquity in their influences. That Satan is also 
the tyrant and head of sinful head is equally plain. This prevalent 
Bible picture of the two kingdoms may be seen carried out in these 
particulars, a.) Satan originated sin. Gen. iii: 1; Rev. xii : 9, 10; 
xx: 2, 10; 1 Jno. iii: 8; Jno. viii : 44; 2 Cor. xi : 3. b.) Satan re- 
mains the leader of the human and angelic hosts which he sed"uced 
into hostility, and employs them in desperate resistance to Christ and 
His Father. He is the "God of this world." 2 Cor. iv : 4. "The 
Spirit that worketh in the children of this world." Eph. ii : 2. Wicked 
men are his children. See above, and 2 Tim. ii : 26. He is "the 
Adversary" (Satan,) "the Accuser," (Diabolos,) "the Destroyer," 
(Apolluon). c.) The progress of Christ to the final overthrow of 
this kingdom is the one great business of all time ; the history of the 
conflict is the history of man and redemption. Gen. iii : 15; Jno. 
xii: 31; 1 Jno. iii: 8-10; 1 Pet. v : 8: Eph. vi: 11; Jno. viii : 44; 
Marc, iii: 23-27; Rom. xvi : 20; Acts xxvi : 18; Luke x : 18. The 
single fact that ungodly man, until the end of the world, compose 
Satan's kingdom, proves that he has, and will have some power or in- 
fluence over their souls. 

Powers of bad Angels. — The powers of Satan and his angels are 
a.) always, and in all forms strictly under the control of God and His 
permissive decree and providence, b.) They are often, perhaps, super- 
human, but never supernatural. If they do what man cannot, it is not 
by possession of omniscience or omnipotence, but by natural law : as. a 
son of Anak could lift more than a common man, or a Davy or Brewster 
could control more of the powers of nature than a peasant. 

There is a supposition, which seems to have plausible grounds, that 
as the plan of redemption advances, the scope of Satan's operations is 
progressively narrowed ; just as the general who is defeated is cut off 
from one another of his resources, and hemmed in to a narrower theatre 
of war, until his final capture. It may be, then, that his power of afflict- 
ing human bodies, of moving the material elements, of communicating 
with wizards, of producing mania by his possessions, have been, or will 
be successively retrenched ; until at last the millennium shall take away 
his remaining power of ordinary temptation. See Luke x : 18 ; Mark 
iii: 27; Rev. xx : 3. But 



OF LECTURES IN" THEOLOGY. 181 

Over Nature — (1.) — Satan once had ; and for anything that can be 
proved, may now have extensive powers over the atmosphere and ele- 
ments. The first is proved by Job, ch. 1 and 2. From this would nat- 
urally follow influence over the bodily health of men. No one can 
prove that some pestilences and droughts, tempests and earthquakes are 
not his work now. 

(2.) Over human minds. — He once had at least an occasional power 
of direct injection of conceptions and emotions, both independent of 
the man's senses and suggestions. See Matt, iv : 3, &c. This is the 
counterpart of the power of good angels, seen in Dan. ix : 22 ; Matt, 
ii : 13. It is this power which makes the crime of witchcraft possible. 
The wizard was a man, and the witch a woman, who was supposed to 
communicate with an evil angel, and receive from him, at the cost of 
some profane and damnable price, power to do superhuman things, or 
to reveal secrets beyond human ken. Its criminality was in its pro- 
fanity, in the alliance with God's enemy, and its malignity in employ- 
ing the arch-murderer, and always for wicked or malicious ends against 
others. 

Witchcraft. — In Exod. xxii : 18, witchcraft is made a capital sin ; 
and in Gal. v: 20, it is still mentioned as a "work of the flesh." Yet 
some suppose that the sin never could be really committed. They ac- 
count for Moses' statute by supposing that the class actually existed as 
imposters, and God justly punished them for their animus. This, i 
think, is hardly tenable. Others suppose the sin was anciently actual ; 
but that now, according to the supposition of a gradual restriction, 
God no longer permits it ; so that all modern wizards are imposters. 
Doubtless there was, at all times, a large infusion of imposture. Others 
suppose that God still occasionally permits the sin, relaxing His curb 
on Satan in judicial anger against men, as in the age of Moses. There 
is nothing unscriptural in this. I do not admit the reality of any 
modern case of witchcraft, only because I have seen no evidence that 
stands a judicial examination. 

(3.) Possession. — Evil spirits had power over men's bodies and souls, 
by usurping a violent controul over their suggestions, emotions and 
volitions, and thus violating their rational personality, and making the 
human members, for the time, their implements. This, no doubt, was 
attended with unutterable horror and agitation of consciousness, in the 
victim. 

These real. — This has been a favourite topic of neologic skepticism. 
They urge that the Evangelists did not really mean to teach actual 
possession ; but their object being theological, and not medical 
or psychological, they used the customary language of their day, not 
meaning thereby to endorse it, as scientific or accurate ; because any 
other language would have been pedantic and useless. They refer to 
Josh, x : 12. In Matt, iv : 24, lunatics (thelen/iadzomenoi) are named ; 
but we do not suppose the author meant to assert they were moonstruck. 
They remind us of similar cases of mania now cured by opiates or 
blisters. They remind us that 'possessions,' like other superstitions, 
are limited to the dark ages. They argue that Daemons are said, 
Jude 6th, to be in chains, &c. 



88 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

In this case the theory is incompatible with the candour of the sa- 
cred writers. For: 1st. They distinguish between "possessions" and 
diseases of a physiological source, by mentioning both separately. See 
Marki: 32; Luke vi : 17,18; Matt, iv : 24, &c. 2d. The daemons, 
as distinct from the possessed men, speak, and are spoken to, are ad- 
dressed, commanded, and rebuked by our Saviour, and deprecate His 
wrath. Mark i: 25, 34; ix: 25; Matt, viii: 32; xvii : 18. 3d. They 
have personality after they go out of men ; whereas the disease has no 
entity apart from the body of which it was an affection. See Luke 
viii: 32. 4th, A definite number of daemons possessed one man, 
Markv: 9, and one woman, Mark xvi : 9. 5th. Their moral quality 
is assigned. 6th. The victories of Christ and His Apostles over them, 
announced the triumph of a spiritual kingdom over Satan's. Mark iii « 
27 ; Luke xi : 20. 

Do "possessions" now exist? Many reply, No ; some on the sup- 
position of a progressive restriction of Satan's license ; others suppos- 
ing that in the age of miracles Providence made special allowance of 
this malice, in order to give Christ and His missionaries special oppor- 
tunity to evince the power of His kingdom, and show earnests of its 
overthrow. The latter is one object of Christ's victories over these 
"possessions." See Mark iii: 27; Luke xi: 20; x: 17-20, (where 
we have a separate proof of the spiritual nature of these possessions, 
as above shown.) Whether "possessions" occur now, I do not feel 
qualified to affirm or deny. 

4th. Temptations. — The fourth power of Satan and daemons is 
doubtless ordinary, and will be until the millennium ; that of tempting 
to sin. This they may still carry on by direct injection of conceptions, 
or affections of the sensibility, without using the natural laws of sen- 
sibility or suggestion ; and which they certainly do practice through 
the natural co-operation of those laws. Thus: A given mental state 
has a natural power to suggest any other with which it is associated. 
So that of several associated states, either one might naturally arise 
in the mind by the next suggestion. Now, these evil spirits seem to 
have the power of giving a prevalent vividness (and thus power over 
the attention and emotions) to that one of the associated states which 
best suit their malignant purposes. Here is the subtlety, and hence 
the danger of these practices, that they are not distinguished in our 
consciousness from natural suggestions, because the Satanic agency is 
strictly through the natural channels. 

May operate through body. — The mutual influence of the physio- 
logical states of the nerves and acts of organs of sense, over the mind, 
and vice versa, is a very obscure subject. We know, at least, that 
there is a mass of important truth there, as yet partially explored. 
Many believe that a concept, for instance, actually colours the retina 
of the eye, as though the visual spectrum of the object was formed 
on it. AH have experienced the influence of emotions over our sense- 
perceptions, Animal influences on the organs of sense and nerves in- 
fluence both concepts and percepts. Now, if evil spirits can produce 
an animal effect on our functions of nervous sensibility, they have a 
mysterious mode of affecting our souls. 

Recurring suggestions unwholesome. — We must also consider the 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 189 

regular psychological law, that vivid suggestions recurring too often 
always evokes a morbid action of the soul. The same subject of anxiety, 
for instance, too frequently recalled, begets an exaggerated anxiety. 
The "One-idea-man" is a mono-maniac. It thus becomes obvious, how 
Satan may now cause various grades of lunacy, and doubtless often does, 
(This is not to be confounded with actual "possessions.") Hence, in 
part, religious melancholies, the most frightful of mental diseases. 
The maniac even, has recessions of disease ; or he has reasons of glee,, 
which, if maniacal, are actual joy to his present consciousness. But 
the victim of religious melancholy has no respite ; he is crushed by a 
perpetual incubus. You can see how Satan (especially if bodily disease 
co-operates) can help to propagate it by securing the too constant recur- 
rence of subjects of spiritual doubt or anxiety. You will see also, that 
the only successful mode to deal with the victims of these attacks is by 
producing diversion of the habitual trains of thought and feeling. 

VII. How powerful is the motive to prayer, and gratitude, for ex- 
emption from these calamitous spiritual assaults, for which we have no 
adequate defence in ourselves? The duty of watchfulness against 
temptations and their occasions, is plain. It becomes an obvious Chris- 
tian duty to attempt to preserve the health of the nervous system, 
refraining from habits and stimulants which may have, we know not 
what influence on our nervous idiosyncrasy. It is also the duty of all 
to avoid overcoming and inordinate emotions about any object ; and to 
abstain from a too constant pursuit of any carnal object, lest Satan 
should get his advantage of us thereby. 

This discussion shows us how beneficent is the interruption of secu- 
lar cares by the Sabbath's break. 



LECTURE XXIII. 



SYLLABUS. 
PROVIDENCE. 

1. Define God's Providence. State the other theories of His practical rela- 
tions to the universe. What concern has it in physical laws and causes ? 

Conf. of Faith, ch. v. Turrett., Loc. vi, que. 1, 2, 4. Dick, Lect. 41 and 
42. Calv. Inst., Bk. II., ch. 1 and 2. So. Presb. Review, Art. I., Jan., 
1870. Knapp, Art. viii, § 67, 69. McCosh, Div. Gov't, Bk. II, ch. 1. 

2. Argue the doctrine of a special, from that of a general providence. 
Turrett., Loc. vi, que. 3. Dick and Calvin, as above. 

3. Prove the doctrine of a providence, a) by God's perfections, b.) By man's 
moral intuitions, c.) From the observed course of nature and human history, d.) 
From the dependence of creatures. 

Turrett., Loc. vi, que. 1. Dick and Calvin, as above. Knapp 8 Art s viii, 
§68. 



1<90 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

4. Present the scriptural argument : a) From prophecy ; b) from express tes- 
timonies. Answer objections. 

Same authorities, and Dick, Lect. 43 

5. Does God's power extend to all acts of rational free agents ? "What 13 His 
-concern in the gracious acts of saints ? What, in the evil acts of sinners ? Dis- 
cuss the doctrine of an immediate cbncursus in the latter. 

Turrett., Loc. vi, que. 4 to 8. Dick, Lect. 42, 43. Calvin Inst., Bk. I, 
ch. xviii. Hill's Div., Bk. IV, ch. 9, § 3. Knapp, Art. viii, § 70 to 72. 
Hodge's Outlines, ch. xiii. 

I & II. Definitions, and other theories. — Providentia, Greek, 
pronoia is the execution in suceessive time, of God's eternal, unsuc- 
cessive purpose, or trodesis. We believe the Scriptures to teach, 
not only that God originated the •whole universe, but that He bears a 
perpetual, active relation to it; and that these works of providence are 
" His most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all His 
creatures, and all their actions." It may be said that there are, besides 
this, three other theories concerning God's relation to the Universe ; 
that of the Epicurean, who, though admitting an intelligent deity, sup- 
posed it inconsistent with His blessedness and perfections, to have any 
likings or anger, care or concern in the multiform events of the worlds ; 
that of the Rational Deists, Socinians, and many rationalists ; that God's 
concern with the Universe is not universal, special and perpetual, but 
only general, viz : by first endowing it with general laws of action, to 
the operation of which each individual being is then wholly left, God 
only exercising a general oversight of the laws, and not of specific 
agents; and that of the Pantheists, who identify all seeming substances 
with God, by making them mere modes of His self-development : so that 
there is no providential relation, but an actual identity ; and all the 
events and acts of the Universe are simply God acting. 

General Providencee unreasonable without special. — The first 
theory is, as we shall see, practical atheism, and is contradicted by a 
proper view of God's attributes. The third has been already refuted, 
as time and ability allowed. Against the second, or Deistical, I object 
that the seeming analogy by which it is suggested is a false one. 
That analogy is doubtless of human rulers — e. g., (a commander of an 
army,) who regulates general rules and important events, without be- 
ing himself cognizant of special details ; and of machinists, who con- 
struct a machine and start its motion, so that it performs a multitude 
of special evolutions, not individually directed by the maker. The 
vital difference is, that the human ruler employs a multitude of intel- 
ligent subordinates, independent of him for being, whose intention spe- 
cifically embraces the details ; whereas God directs inanimate nature, 
according to deists, without such intervention. The Platonist concep- 
tion of a providence administered over particulars by daemons is more 
consistent with this analogy. And the machinist does but adjust some 
motive power which God's providence supplies (water on his wheel, 
the elasticity of a spring, &c.,) to move his machine in his absence ; 
whereas God's providence itself must be the motive power of His uni- 
versal machine. 2d. On this deistical scheme of providence, results 
must either be fortuitous to God, (and then He is no longer Sovereign 
nor Almighty, and we reach practical atheism,) or else their occurrence 
is determined by Him through the medium of causations possessed of 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 191 

a physical necessity ; (and we are thus landed in stoical fate!) 3d. It 
is a mere illusion to talk of a direction of the general, which does not 
embrace the particulars ; for a general class is nothing, when separated 
from the particulars which compose it, but an abstraction of the mind. 
Practically, the general is only produced by producing all the specials 
which compose it. 4th. God's providence evolves all events by using 
second causes according to their natures. But all events are inter- 
connected, nearly or remotely, as causes and effects. And the most 
minute events often bear the connexion with the grandest; e. g., the 
burning of a city from a vagrant spark ; the change of King Abab's 
dynasty by an errant arrow. Hence, according to this mode of provi- 
dence, which alone we see God usually employs, unless His care ex- 
tended to every event specially, it could not effectuate any, certainly. 
To exercise a general providence without a special, is as though a man 
should form a chain without forming its links. 

The definition of Providence, which we adopted from the Catechism, 
divides it into two works — sustentation and government. 

Providential Sustentation What? Scholastic conception op 
it. — According to the Augustinian scholastics, the Cartesians, and 
many of the stricter Calvinistic Reformers, this sustentation of crea- 
tures in being is effected by a perpetual, active efflux or concursus of 
divine power at every successive instant, identical with that act of 
will and power by which they were brought out of nihil into esse; and 
they conceive that on the cessation of this act of God, for one instant, 
towards any. creature whatsoever, it would return incontinently to 
non-existence. So that it is no figure of speech with them to say, 
"Sustentation is a perpetual re-creation." Their arguments are, that 
God alone is self-existent; hence those things which have a dependent 
existence cannot have the ground of the continuance of their exist- 
ence in themselves — that all creatures exist in successive time : but the 
instants of successive time have no substantive tie between them by 
which one produces the next; but they only follow each other, whence 
it results that successive existence is momentarily returning to nihil, 
and is only kept out of it by a perpetual re-creation. And 3d. They 
quote Scriptures, as Neh. ix : 6 ; Job x: 12; Ps. civ : 27-30; Acts 
xvii: 28; Heb. i: 3; Col. i: 17. 

This not proved. — This speculation has always seemed to me without 
basis, and its demonstration, to say the least, impossible for the human 
understanding. But let me distinctly premise, that both the existence 
and essence, or the being and properties of every created thing, origi- 
nated out of nothing, in the mere will and power of God ; that they 
are absolutely subject, at every instant of their successive existence, to 
His sovereign power ; that their action is all regulated by His special 
providence, and that He could reduce them to nothing as easily as He 
created them. Yet, when I am required to believe that their susten- 
tation is a literal, continuous re-production by God's special act out of 
nihil, I cannot but remember that, after all, the human mind has no 
cognition of substance itself, except as the unknown substratum of 
properties, and no insight into the manner in which it subsists. Hence 
we are not qualified to judge, whether its subsistence is maintained in 
this way. The arguments seem to me invalid. When we deny self- 



192 SYLLABUB AND NOTES 

existent to creatures, we deny that the cause which originates their 
existence can be in them ; but this is far from proving that God, in 
originating their existence, may not have conferred it as a permanent 
gift, continuing itself so loDg as He permits it. e. g., Motion is never 
assumed by matter of itself; but when impressed from without, it is 
never self-arrested. To say that finite creatures exist in successive 
time, or have their existence measured by it, is wholly another thing 
from showing that this succession constitutes their existence. "What is 
time, but an abstract idea of our minds, which we project upon the 
finite existence which we think of or observe? Let any man analyse 
his own conception, and he will find that the existence is conceived of 
as possessing a true continuity ; it is the time by which his mind mea- 
sures it, that lacks the continuity. Last. These general statements of 
Scripture only assert the practical and entire dependence of creatures; 
no doubt their authors would be very much surprised to hear them in- 
terpreted into these metaphysical subtilties. 

Monads not dependent in same way as organisms. — You will 
observe that the class of ideas which leads to this idea of a perpetual 
efflux of divine power, in recreation, are usually borrowed from organ- 
ized material bodies. Men forget that the existence of organisms may 
be, and probably is, dependent, in a very different sense, from that of 
simple existence, such as a material ultimate atom, or a pure spirit. 
For the existence of an organized body is nothing but the continuance 
of its organization, i. e., of the aggregation of its parts in certain 
modes. This, in turn, is the effect of natural causes ; but these causes 
operate under the perpetual active superintendence of (rod. So that it 
is literally true, the existence of a compounded organism, like the 
human body, is the result of God's perpetual, providential activity ; 
and the mere cessation of this would be the end of the organism. But 
the same fact is not proved of simple, monadic substances. 

What is second cause? — But what are natural causes and laws f 
This question enters intimately into our views of providence, inasmuch 
as they are the means with which providence works. The much-abused 
phrase, law of nature, has been vaguely used in various senses. Some- 
times men seem to mean by it, a class of similar facts in nature gen- 
eralized ; sometimes it is used as the name for some recurring cause : 
but properly it means that it is the observed regular mode or rule, accor- 
ding to which a given cause, or class of causes operates under given con- 
ditions. This definition of itself will show us the absurdity of offering 
a law of nature to account for the existence of anything. For nature 
is but an abstraction, and the law is but the regular mode of acting of 
.a cause; so that instead of accounting for, it needs to be accounted for 
itself. The fact that a phenomenon is produced again and again regu- 
larly, does not account for its productions ! The true question which 
lies at the root of the matter is, concerning the real power which is 
present in natural causes. We say that they are those things which, 
under certain conditions, have powtr to produce certain effects. What, 
then, is the power ? It is answered that the power resides in some 
property of the thing we call cause, when that property is brought into 
certain relations with the properties of some other thing. But still, 
.the question recurs : Is the power, the activity, a true property of the 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 193 

thing which acts as cause, or is the power truly God's force, and the 
occurrence of the relation between the properties of cause and effect 
merely the appointed occasion of its exertion ? This is the question. 
Let me premise, before stating the answers given, that the question 
should be limited to the laws of material nature, and to physical causes. 
All sound philosophy now regards intelligent spirits as themselves 
proper fountains of causation, because possessed of a true spontaneity 
and self-determination, not indeed emancipated from God's sovereign 
control, yet real and intrinsically active, as permitted and regulated 
by Him. 

Some admit no katural force but God. — But, as to physical 
causes, orthodox divines and philosophers give different answers. Say 
the one class, as Dick, matter is only passive. The coming of the 
properties of the cause into the suitable relation to the effect is only 
the occasion; the true agency is but God's immediately. All physical 
power is God directly exerting Himself through passive matter : and the 
law of the cause is but the regular mode which He proposes to Himself 
for such exertions of His power. Hence, the true difference between nat- 
ural power and miraculous, would only be, that the former is customary 
under certain conditions, the latter, under those conditions, unusual. 
When a man feels his weary limbs drawn towards the earth, by what 
men call gravity, it is in fact as really God drawing them, as when, 
against gravity, the body of Elijah or Christ was miraculously borne 
on high. And the reason they assign is : that matter is negative and 
inert; and can only be the recipient of power : and that it is incapable 
of that intelligence, recollection, and volition, implied in obedience 
to a regular law. 

,- Theory of McCosh Defective. — Others, as McCosh, Hodge, &c, 
would say, that to deny all properties of action to material things, is to 
reduce them to practical nonentity; leaving God the only agent and the 
only true existence, in the material universe. Their view is that God, 
in creating and organizing material bodies, endued them with certain 
properties. These properties He sustains in them by that perpetual 
support and superintendence He exerts. And these properties are 
specific powers of acting or being acted on, when brought into suit- 
able relations with the properties of other bodies. Hence, while power 
is really in the physical cause, it originated in, and is sustained by, 
God's power. The question then arises : If this be so, if the power is 
intrinsically in the physical cause, wherein does God exert any special 
providence in each case of causation? Is not His providential control 
banished from the domain of these natural laws, and limited to His 
act of creation, which endued physical causes with their power? The 
answer which McCosh makes to this question is ; that nothing is a 
cause by itself; nor does a mere capacity for producing a given effect 
make a thing a cause; unless it be placed in a given relation with a 
suitable property of some other thing. And here, says he, is God's 
special, present providence ; in constituting those suitable relations for 
inter action, by His superintendence. The obvious objection to this 
answer seems to have been overlooked; that these juxta-positions, or 
relations, are themselves always brought about by God (except where 
free agents are employed) by natural causes. Hence, the view of God's 



196 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

diately or remotely. Prophecy, threats, promises, and the duty of 
prayer prove it, (see on Decrees,) and Scripture expressly asserts it. 
Prov. xvi : 9; xx : 24, xxi; 1; Jer. x: 23; Ps. xxxiii : 14,15; Glen, 
xlviii: 8, &c; Exod. xii : 36; 1 Ps. xxiv; 9-15; Phil, ii : 13; Acts 
ii : 23 ; 2 Sam. xvi : 10 ; xxiv : 1 ; Ps. lxxvi : 10 ; Rom. xi : 32 ; Ants 
iv : 28 ; Rom. ix : 18 ; 2 Sam. xii : 11 ; 1 Kings xxii : 23 ; Ps. cv : 25. 

Objections. — The objections against the Bible doctrines may all be 
reduced to these heads : 

1. Epicurean : that God would be fatigued from so many cares. 

2. That it is derogatory to His dignity to be concerned with trivi- 
alities. 

3. The disorders existing in material nature, and in the course of 
human affairs, would be inconsistent with His benevolence and right- 
eousness. 

4. The doctrine infringes the efficacy of second causes, and the 
free-agency of intelligent creatures. 

5. Last : It makes God the author of sin. 

For answers, see above and below ; and Lick, Lect. 43. 

V. In proceeding to speak of the control of Providence over the acts 
of intelligent free agents, we must bear in mind the essential difference 
between them and physical bodies. A body is not intrinsically a cause. 
Causation only takes place when a certain relation between given 
properties of two bodies, is established by God's providence. (See § 1.) 
But a soul is a fountain of spontaneity; it is capable of will, in itself, 
and is self-determined to will, by its own prevalent dispositions. Soul 
is a cause. 

God's Agency in man's spiritual acis. — Now, the Bible attributes 
all the spiritually good acts of man to God. Rom. vii : 18; Phil, ii : 
13; iv: 13; 2 Cor. xii: 9, 10; Eph. ii : 10; Gal. v: 22-25. God's 
concern in such acts may be explained as composed of three elements, 
a.) He perpetually protects and preserves, the human person with the 
capacities which He gave to it naturally, b.) He graciously renews 
the dispositions by his immediate, almighty will, so as to incline them, 
and keep them inclined by the Holy Ghost, to the spiritually good, 
c.) He providentially disposes the objects and truths before the soul 
thus renewed, so that they become the occasional causes of holy voli- 
tions freely put forth by the sanctified will. Thus God is, in an effi- 
cient sense, the intentional author of the holy acts, and of the holiness 
of the acts, of his saints. 

God's agency in Man's sins. Is there a concursus. — But, the 
question of His concern in the evil acts of free agents (and the natu- 
rally indifferent,) is more difficult. The Dominican Scholastics, or 
Thomists, followed by some Calvinistic Reformers, felt themselves con- 
strained, in order to uphold the efficiency and certainty of God's con- 
trol over the evil acts of His creatures, to teach their doctrine of the 
physical concursus of God in all such acts, (as well as in all good acts, 
and physical causes.) This is not merely God's sustentation of the 
being and capacities of creatures ; not merely a moral influence by 
truths or motives providentially set before them ; not merely an infu- 
sion of a general power of acting to which the creature gives the 
specific direction, by his choice alone, in each individual act ; but in 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 197 

addition to all this, a direct, immediate physical energizing of the active 
power of creature, disposing and predetermining it efficaciously to the 
specific act. and also enabling it thereto, and so passing over with the 
agency of the creature, into the action. Thus, it is an immediate, 
physical, predisposing, specific and concurrent influence to act. Their 
various arguments may be summed up in these three : that the Scrip- 
ture, e. g., Gen. xlv: 7; Is. x: 15, &c; Acts xvii : 28; Phil, ii : 13; 
Col. i : 13, demand the concursus of God to satisfy their full meaning : 
that as man's esse is dependent on the perpetual recreative efflux of 
God's power, so his acting must perpetually depend on His concursus, 
because the creature must act according to his being, and that without 
this concursus. God's concern in all human acts could not be as effi- 
cacious and sovereign as Scripture asserts, and as is shown by His claim 
to be universl first cause, by His eternal purpose, by His predictions, 
&c, &c. 

Turrettin obviously implies, in his argument, that the rational crea- 
ture's will, like a second 'cause in matter, is indeterminate to any spe- 
cific effect. For he argues that a cause thus indeterminate or indif- 
ferent must receive its determination to a specific effect, from some 
cause out of, and above itself, which must be active, and determinating 
to the specific effect. (Qu. 5, § 8, &c.) 

Now, on this I remark, see here the great importance of the distinc- 
tion I made (in last lecture, and on the difference of permissive and 
efficacious decrees) between material and rational second causes. 

Again : Consider if Turrettin does not here surrender a vital point 
of his own doctrine concerning the will. That point is, that the 
rational will is not in equilibrio ; that volitions are not contingent phe- 
nomena, but regular effects. Effects of what? Sound metaphysics 
says, of subjective motive. The soul (not the faculty of choice itself,) 
is self-determining — i. e., spontaneous. But this according to a law, its 
subjective law. 

It is not Revealed by Consciousness. — Now, to this I reply far- 
ther, (a. The doctrine that God's sustentation is by a perpetual active 
efflux of creative power, we found to be improved as to spirits, which 
unlike bodies, possess the properties of true being, absolute unity and 
simplicity. That doctrine is only true, in any sense, of organized 
bodies ; which are not proper beings, but rather organized collections 
of a multitude of separate beings, or atoms. My consciousness tells 
me that I have a power of acting (according to the laws of my nature) 
dependent indeed, and controlled always by God, yet which is person- 
ally my own. It originates in the spring of my own spontaneity. As 
to the relation between personal power in us, and the power of the 
first cause, we know nothing ; for neither He, nor consciousness, tells us 
anything. 

Not Required by God's Sovereignty. — b.) Surely the meaning of 
all such Scriptures as those referred to, is sufficiently satisfied, as well 
as the demands of God's attributes and government, by securing these 
two points. First, God is not the author of sin ; Second, His control 
over all the acts of all His creatures is certain, sovereign and efficacious; 
and such as to have been determined from eternity. If a way can be 
shown, in which God thus controls these sinful acts, without this physi- 



200 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

§ 17,) admits himself to be constrained by it to hold, that no moral 
act has intrinsic moral quality per se. He even quibbles, that the 
hatred of Grod felt by a sinner is not evil by its intrinsic nature as 
simple act of will ; but only by its adjuncts. Ans. The act, 
apart from its adjuncts, is either no act at all, or a different 
act intrinsically. There is false analysis here. Turrettin (again) 
is misled by instances such as these admitted ones. All kill- 
ing is not murder. All smiting is not malice. All taking is not theft, 
&c, &c. The sophism is here, that these are outward acts : effectuated 
through bodily members. As to the mere physical phenomenon of vo- 
litions moving bodily members, we admitted, and argued that, ab- 
stracted from its physical antecedents and adjuncts, it has no moral 
quality. Proof is easy. But, in strictness of speech, the physical 
execution of the volition in the act of striking, &c, is not the act of 
soul — only the outward result thereof. The act of soul is the intent 
of will. In this, the right or wrong moral relation is intrinsic. Now, 
would not Turrettin say, that the concursus he teaches incites and 
directs the act of soul, and not that of the body merely ? Certainly. 
Thus it appears that his distinction and evasion are inadequate. 

Or thus : No Calvinist will deny that the morality of an act is de- 
termined by its intention. But intention is action of soul, as truly as 
volition. And if a physical concursus is necessary to all action, it is 
so to intention. Thus God's action would be determinative of the 
morality of the act. 



LECTURE XXIY. 



SYLLABUS. 

lAIS'S ESTATE OF INNOCENCE AND THE COVENANT 
OP WORKS. 

[Genesis, Ch. I to III. Con. of Faith, Ch. IV and VI.] 

1. In what consisted the image of God, in which man was created ? "Was he 
constituted of spirit and bodv ? "Wherein consisted his original righteousness ? 

Turrett., Loc. V. Qu. 10. Dick, Lect. 40. Watson's Theo. Inst., Ch. 18. 
Knapp., Art. VI, Sect. LI to LIII. 

2. Was Adam's original righteousness concreated, or acquired by acting ? 
State the theories of Calvinists and Pelagians, and establish the true one. 

Turrett., Loc. V., Qu. 9, 11. Loc. VIII, Qu. 1, 2. Loc. IX, Qu. 2. Hill, 
Bk. IV, Ch. 1, § 2. Dick., Lect. 40. Knapp., Lect. LIV. Watson, Theo. 
Inst., Ch. 18, § I. (II.) 

3. What was Adam's natural relation to God's law ? 

Turrett., Loc. V., Qu. 12. Dick, Lect. 44. Watson as above, § f. 

4. Did God place man under a covenant of works f And did Adam therein 
represent his posterity ? 

Turrett,, Loc. VIII, Qu. 3 and 6. Hill, Bk. IV, Ch. 1, §1, II. Dick, Lect. 
44 and 45. Watson, Theo. Inst- Ch. 18, § III. 

5. What was the ' condition,' and what the 'seal' of that Covenant ? 
Turrett., Loc. VIII, Qu. 4, 5, 7. Dick and Hill, as above. 

I, Man's Origin from One Pair. — The first three chapters of Gene- 



OF LECTURES IK THEOLOGY. 201 

sis present a desideratum wholly unsupplied by any human writing, in 
a simple, natural, and yet authentic account of man's origin. The 
statement that his body was created out of pre-existent matter, and his 
soul communicated to that body by God, solves a thousand inquiries 
which mythology and philosophy are alike incompetent to meet. And 
from this first father, together with the helpmeet formed for him, of 
the opposite sex, from his side, have proceeded the whole hmuan race, 
by successive generation. The unity of race in the human family has 
been much mooted by half-scholars in natural science of our day, and 
triumphantly defended. I must remit you wholly for the discussion to 
the books written by Christian scholars on that subject, of which I may 
mention, as accessible and popular, Cabell, the University Lectures, 
and the work of Dr. Bachman, of Charleston. I would merely point 
out, in passing, the theological importance of this natural fact. If 
there are any men on earth not descended from Adam's race, then their 
federal connexion with him is broken. But more, their inheritance in 
the ■protevangelium, that the "seed of the woman shall bruise the ser- 
pent's head," is also interrupted. The warrant of the Church to carry 
the gospel to that people is lacking; and indeed all the relations of 
man to man are interrupted as to them. Lastly, the integrity of the 
Bible as the Word of God is fatally affected ; for the unity of the race 
is implied in all its system, in the whole account of God's dealings with 
it, in all its histories, and asserted in express terms. Acts xvii : 26. 
See Breckinridge's Theol., vol. I, ch. 3, i. For additional Scriptures 
Gen. 3 : 30, 7:23, 9 : 1, 19, 10: 32. Unity of race is necessary to re- 
lation to the Redeemer, 

Man, Body and Spirit. — But a yet more precious part of this pas- 
sage of Scripture is the explanation it gives of the state of universal 
sin, self-condemnation, and vanity, in which we now find man ; which 
is so hard to reconcile with God's attributes. The simple, but far- 
reaching solution is, that man is not in the state in which he was made 
by his Creator. The record tells us that God "formed man of the dust 
of the ground, and breached into his nostrils the breath of life, and man 
became a living soul." Here, in the simple language of a primeval 
people, the two-fold nature of man, as matter and spirit, is asserted. 
As the popular terms of every people have selected breath, ruach 
pneuma, spiritus, to signify this inscrutable substance, thinking spirit. 
The narrative describes the communication of the soul to the body by 
the act of breathing. And, it may be added, the view to which rea- 
son led us, as to the spirituality of man's thinking part, is confirmed by 
all Scripture. Here, Gen. 2 : 7. The body is first formed from one 
source, and then the spirit is communicated to it from a different one. 
God is thus the Father of our spirits. Heb. xii : 9. At death, the two 
substances separate, and meet different fates. Eccl. xii : 7 ; 2 Cor. v ; 
1-8 ; Phil, i : 22, 23. The body and soul are in many ways distinguished 
as different substances, and capable of existing separately. Matt, x : 
28 ; Luke viii ■ 55. The terms body, soul, and spirit, are twice used 
as exhaustive enumerations of the whole man. 1 Thess. v. 23 ; Heb. 
4: 12. 

Image op God what. — Next, we learn that man, unlike all lower 
creatures, was formed in the "image of God" — " after His likeness." 
The general idea here is obviously, that there is a resemblance of man 



202 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

to God. It is not in sameness of essence, for God is incommunicable ; 
nor in corporeal shape, for God is immense, and modified by figure. 
It was obviously in these particulars, that man is a spiritual, thinking, 
and immortal being — that he is God's ruler over inferior creatures, and 
the earth ; and chiefly that he was created intelligent and holy. The 
old Pelagians and Socinians attempted to limit man's possession of 
God's image to the second particular, in order to gain countenance for 
their vaia theories of the nature of sin, and denial of original sin, as 
we shall see. But we substantiate against them the definition of God's 
image ; as to its first particular, by Gen. ix : 6, where we learn that the 
crime of murder owes its enormity chiefly to this, that it destroys 
God's image. See also, Jas. iii : 9. But since the fall, man has lost 
his original righteousness, and his likeness to God consists only in his 
possession of an intelligent spiritual nature. Dominion over the earth 
and its animals was plainly conferred, Gen. i : 26, 2*7 ; Ps. 8, and it is 
implied that this feature made man, in an humble sense, a representa- 
tive of God on the earth, in Gen. i : 26, 27, from the connexion in 
which the two things are mentioned, and in 1 Cor. xi : 1, from the idea 
there implied, that the authority given him by God over the other sex 
makes him God's representative. But the likeness consists chiefly in 
man's original moral perfection, the intelligence and rectitude of his 
conscience. This is argued from the fact that the first man, like all the 
other works of creation, was " very good." Gen. i; 31. This "good- 
ness" must, in fairness, be understood thus, that each created thing had 
in perfection those properties which adapted it to its designed relations. 
Man is an intelligent being, and was created to know, enjoy and glorify 
God as such ; hence his moral state must have been perfect. See also, 
Eccl. vii : 29. And that this was the most important feature of God's 
likeness, is evident ; because it is that likeness which man regains by 
the new creation. See Bom. xii; 2; Col. iii: 10; Eph. iv ; 24. This 
also, is the likeness which saints aspire after, which they hope to attain 
when they regain Adam's original perfection. Ps. xvii : 15 ; 1 Jno. iii : 2. 
Adam's natural Righteousness defined. — If we attempt to define 
the original righteousness of man's nature, we must say that, first, it 
implies the possession of those capacities of understanding and con- 
science, and that knowledge which were necessary for the correct com- 
prehension of all his own moral relations. This equality excludes the 
extravagant notion, that he was endued by nature with all the know- 
ledge ever acquired by all his descendants; and its opposite, that his 
soul commenced its existence in an infantile state. Second. Man's 
righteousness consisted in the perfectly harmonious concurrence of all 
the dispositions of his soul, aud consequently of all his volitions 
prompted thereby, with the decisions of his conscience, which in its 
turn was correctly directed by God's holy will. His righteousness, 
was then, a natural and entire conformity, in principle and volition, with 
God's law. Adam was doubtless possessed of free ivill, (Confession, ch. 
iv, § 2, ix, § 2,) in the sense which we saw, was alone appropriate to 
any rational free agent; that in all his responsible, moral acts, his 
soul was self-determined in its volitions — i. e., he chose according to 
his own understanding and dispositions, free from co-action. But his 
will was no more self-determining, or in equilibrio, than man's will 
now. (We saw that such a state would be neither free, rational, nor 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 203 

moral.) Just as man's dispositions now decisively incline his will, in a 
state of nature, to ungodliness, so they then inclined it to holiness. 
This inclination was prevalent, and complete for the time, yet not im- 
mutable, as the event proved. But this mutability of will dnl not 
imply any infirmity of moral nature peculiar to man, as compared 
with angels. The fate of the non-elect angels shows that it is the in- 
evitable result of man's being finite. Impeccability is the property of 
none but the Infinite, and those to whom He communicates it by His 
indwelling wisdom and grace. How a creature soul could be prevalently 
and cocnpletely holy in its dispositions, and yet mutable, is a most ob- 
struse problem, to which we will return in due place. 

II. Adam's Righteousness concreated. — Was Adam's righteous- 
ness, in his estate of blessedness, native or acquired? The Calviuist 
answers, it was native ; it was conferred upon him as the original 
habitus of his will by the creative act which made him an intelligent 
creature. And the exercise of holy volitions was the natural effect of 
the principles which God gave him. This is the obvious and simple 
meaning of our doctrine ; not that righteousness was so an essential 
attribute of man's nature, that the loss of it would make him no 
longer a human being proper. 

View of Pelagians and Socinians. — The Pelagians of the 5th cen- 
tury, followed by modern Sociuians, and many of the New England 
school, assert that Adam could only have received from his Maker a 
negative innocency ; and that a positive righteousness could only be the 
result of his own voluntary acts of choice. Their fundamental dogma 
is, that nothing has moral quality except that which is voluntary (mean- 
ing by this, the result of an act of choosing). Hence, they infer, no- 
thing is sin, or holiness, but acts of volition. Hence, a con-created 
rectitude of will would be no righteousness, and have no merit, because 
not the result of the person's own act of choice. Hence, also, they say 
a priori dispositions have no moral quality, except where they are ac- 
quired habitudes of disposition resulting from voluntary acts. Of this 
kind was Adam's holy character, they say. And so, in the work of 
conversion, it is all nonsense to talk of being made righteous, or of re- 
ceiving a holy heart : man must act righteousness, and make by choosing 
a holy heart. 

Intermediate Romish Ground. — This is the most important point 
in the whole subject of man's original state and relation to God's law. 
Before proceeding, however, to its discussion, it may be well to state 
the evasive ground assumed by the Romish Church between the two. 
In order to gain a semi-Pelagian position, without avowing the above 
odious principles, they teach that the first man was created holy, but 
that original righteousness was not a natural habitus of his own will, 
but a supernatural grace, communicated to him temporarily by God. 
According to Rome, concupiscence is not sin, and it existed in holy 
Adam ; but it has a perpetual tendency to override the limits of con- 
science, and thus become sin. So long as the supernatural grace of ori- 
ginal righteousness was communicated to Adam, he stood ; the moment 
God saw fit to withdraw it, natural concupiscence became inordinate, 
sin was born, and man fell. The refutation of this view of man's ori- 
ginal rectitude will be found below, in the proof that concupiscence is 
sin, and that man was made by nature holy. We understand that it is 



204 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

implied, if man had not sinned, he would have transmitted that holy 
nature to his posterity: surely supernatural grace does not "run in the 
blood " 1 The idea is also derogatory to God's wisdom and holiness, 
that He should make a creature, and endue it with such a nature as was 
of itself inadequate to fulfil the end of its existence as a moral being, 
and so construct its propensities that sin would be the normal, certain 
and immediate result of their unrestricted action ! It represents God 
as creating imperfection. 

Proof of our view. Pelagian argument ambiguous. — We assert 
against the Pelagians, that man was positively holy by nature, as he 
came from God's hand ; because the plea that nothing can have moral 
quality which is involuntary, is ambiguous and sophistical. That 
which occurs or exists against a man's positive volition can be to him 
neither praise nor blame. This is the proposition to which common 
sense testifies. It is a very different proposition to say that there can- 
not be moral desert, because no positive volition was exercised about 
it. (The Pelagian's proposition.) For then there could be no sins of 
omission, where the ill-desert depended on the very fact that the man 
wholly failed to choose when he should have chosen. The truth is, 
man's original dispositions are spontaneous ; they subsist and operate 
in him freely, without co-action ; and only because of their own mo- 
tion. This is enough to show them responsible, and blame, or praise- 
worthy. A man always feels good or ill desert according as his spon- 
taneous feelings are in a right or wrong state, not according to the 
mode or process by which they came into that state. 

Scripture teaches our view. — b.) We have already seen, from 
Gen. i; 26, 27; i: 31; Eccles. vii : 29, that man was made in the 
image of God, and that this image was most essentially his original 
righteousness. God's word, therefore, sustains our view. The same 
thing is seen in the language of Scripture concerning the new creation, 
regeneration. This, the Bible expressly affirms, is a "creation unto 
righteousness." Eph. iv; 24; ii ; 10; Rom. viii : 29; Eph. i : 4. It 
is a supernatural change of disposition, wrought not merely through 
motive, but by almighty power. Eph. i : 19,20; ii : 1-5. It deter- 
mines not only the acts, but the will. Ps ex : 3; Phil, ii : 13. And 
God has Himself suggested the analogy on which our -argument pro- 
ceeds by choosing the term "new creation," to describe it. Hence, 
as the new-born soul is made holy, and does not merely act a holiness, 
the first man was made righteous. Let me remark here, that ancient 
and modern Pelagians virtually admit the justice of this, by denying 
the possibility of a regeneration by grace ; and on the same grounds, 
that a state of holiness not primarily chosen by the will, could not 
be meritorious. On their theory the human soul of Christ would not 
have had a positive righteousness by nature. But see Luke i: 35. 

No naturae neutrality possible. — c.) Their theory is contra- 
dicted by common sense in this: that a moral neutrality, in a being 
who had the rational faculties and the data for comprehending the 
moral relations in a given case, is impossible ; and if possible, would 
be criminal. It is the very nature of conscience, that when the moral 
relations of a given case are comprehended, her dictum is immediate, 
inevitable and categorical. The dispositions also must either be diss* 
posed actively, one way or the other, or they are not dispositions at all. 



OF LECTURES IX THEOLOGY. 205 

They cannot be in equilibrio, any more than motion can be quiescent. 
And does not every sane conscience decide that if Adam, on compre- 
hending his moral relations to his infinitely good, kind, glorious and holy 
Father, had simply failed to choose His love and service instantly; if he 
had been capable of hesitation for one moment, that would itself have 
constituted a moral defect, a sin? 

No Principle of right choice would have been present. — d.) 
Had Adam's will been in the state of equilibrium described, and his 
moral character initially negative, then there would have been in him 
nothing to prompt a holy choice ; and the choice which he might have 
made for that which is formally right would have had nothing in it 
morally good. For the intention determining the volition gives all its 
moral quality. Thus he could never have chosen or acted a righteous- 
ness, nor initiated a moral habitude, his initial motive being non-moral. 

Corruption of Infants refutes Pelagianism. — e.) These false 
principles must lead, as Pelagians freely avow, to the denial of original 
depravity in infants. That which does not result from an act of intel- 
ligent choice, say they, cannot have moral quality ; so, there can be no 
SMi of nature, any more than a natural righteousness. But that man 
has a sin of nature, is proved by common experience, asserted by Scrip- 
ture, and demonstrated by the fact that all are " by nature the chil- 
dren of wrath," and even from infancy suffer and die under God's hand. 

f.) If the doctrine be held that a being cannot be created righteous 
without choice, then those that die in infancy cannot be redeemed. 
For they cannot exercise as yet intelligent acts of moral choice, and 
thus convert themselves by choosing God's service. The Pelagian does 
indeed virtually represent the infant as needing no redemption, having 
no sin of nature. But the Bible and experience prove that he does 
need redemption: whence, on Pelagian principles, the damnation of 
all who die in infancy is inevitable. 

Their Theory Has No Facts. — Last, the theory of the Pelagian is 
utterly unphilosophical in this, that it has no experimental basis. It is 
a mere hypothesis. No human being has ever existed consciously in the 
state of moral indifference which they assume ; or been conscious of that 
initial act of choice which generated his moral character. Surely all 
scientific propositions ought to have some basis of experimental proof! 
Ethics should be an inductive science. 

III. Natural Relation of Creature to God's Will. — Any intel- 
ligent moral creature of God is naturally bound to love Him with all 
his heart, and serve him with all his strength, i. e., this obligation is 
not created by positive precept only, but arises out of the very perfec- 
tions of God, and the relations of the creature, as His property, and 
deriving all his being and capacities from God's hands. Doubtless 
Adam's holy soul recognized joyfully this obligation. And doubtless 
his understanding was endowed with the sufficient knowledge of so 
much of God's will as related to his duties at that time. It may be 
very hard for us to say how much this was. Now, it is common for di- 
vines to say, that a creature cannot merit anything of God. This has 
struck many minds as doubtful and unfair, whence it is important that 
we should properly distinguish. In denying that a creature of God can 
merit any thing, it is by no means meant that the holy obedience of a crea- 



206 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

ture is before God devoid of good moral character. It possesses praise- 
Avorthiness, if holy, and undoubtedly receives that credit at God's hands. 
The fact that it is naturally due to God does not at all deprive it of its 
good quality. But the question remains : What is that quality t Ob- 
viously, it is that the natural connexion between holiness and happi- 
ness shall not be severed, as long as the holiness continues ; that, as the 
obedience rendered is that evoked by the natural relation to the Crea- 
tor's will ; so the desert acquired is of that natural well-being appro- 
priate to the creature's capacities. The guarantee to the creature for 
this, in the absence of any positive covenant from God, is simply the 
divine goodness and righteousness, which render God incapable of treat- 
ing a holy being worse than this. The creature is God's property* 

The Creature Canndt Merit.— But it is equally obvious that such 
obedience on the creature's part cannot bring God in his debt, to con- 
descend to him in any way, to communicate Himself as a source of super- 
natural blessedness, or stability in holiness, or to secure his natural 
well-being longer than his voluntary and mutable obedience is con- 
tinued. And the reasons are, simply that none of the creature's obe- 
dience can be supererogatory, he owing his utmost at any rate ; and 
that all his being and capacities were given by God, and are His property. 
I cannot bring my benefactor in my debt by giving him something 
which he himself lent to me ; I am but restoring his own. This is 
what is intended by the Confession of Faith, Ch. vii, § 1. The Scrip- 
tures clearly support it. Ps. xvi : 2 ; Job. xxxv : 7, 8 ; Acts, xvii : 24, 
25 ; Ps. 1:9-12; Luke xvii : 7-10. 

But, Death would not have Entered without Sin.— But it is 
equally clear that mortality and the connected ills of life could not 
have been the natural lot of man irrespective of his sin and fall, as the 
Pelagians and Socinians pretend. Their motive in assuming this repul- 
sive tenet, is, to get rid of the argument for original sin presented by 
the sufferings and death of infants who have committed no overt sin. 
The assertion is abhorrent to the justice and goodness of God. Phy- 
sical evil is the appointed consequence of moral evil, and the sanction 
threatened for the breach of God's will. To suppose it appointed to an 
obedient moral being, irrespective of any guilt, overthrows either God's 
moral attributes, or His providence, and confounds heaven with earth. 
Second : It is inconsistent with that image of God, and that natural 
perfection, in which man was created. The workmanship was declared 
to be very good ; and this doubtless excluded the seeds of its own 
destruction. It was in the image of God; and this included immor- 
tality. But last, the Scriptures imply that man would neither have 
suffered nor died if he had not sinned, by appointing death as the 
threat against transgression. And this, while it meant more than 
bodily death, certainly included this, as is evident from Gen. ii : 17-19. 
See, then, Gen. ii : 17; Rom. v: 12; vi : 23; Matt, xix : 17; Gal. 
iii : 12. These last evidently have reference to the covenant of works 
made with Adam ; and they explicitly say, that if a perfect obedience 
were possible, (as it was with Adam before he fell,) it would secure 
eternal life. 

Covenant of Works Gracious.— God's act in entering into a cove- 
nant with Adam, if it be substantiated, will be found to be one of pure 



OF LECTURES IN" THEOLOGY. 207 

grace and condescension. He might justly have held him always under 
his natural relationship ; and Adam's obedience, however long continued, 
would not have brought God into his debt for the future. Thus, his 
holiness being mutable, his blessedness would always have hung in 
suspense. God, therefore, moved by pure grace, condescended to estab- 
lish a covenant with His holy creature, in virtue of which a temporary 
obedience might be graciously accepted as a ground for God's commu- 
nicating Himself to him, and assuring him ever after of holiness, hap- 
piness, and communion with God. Here then is the point of osculation 
between the covenant of works, and the covenant of grace, the law and 
the gospel. Both offer a plan of free justification, by which a right- 
eousness should be accepted, in covenant, to acquire for the creature 
more than he could strictly claim of God ; and thus gain him ever- 
lasting life. In the covenant of grace, all is " ordained in the hand of 
a mediator," because man's sin had else excluded him from access to 
God's holiness. In the covenant of works, no mediator was required, 
because man was innocent, and God's purity did not forbid him to con- 
descend to him. But in both, there was 'free grace; in both a justifi- 
cation unto life ; in both a gracious bestowal of more than man had 
earned. 

IV. Covenant of Works, What ? Proof of its Institution. — 
The evidences that God placed Adam under a covenant of Works are 
well stated by the standard authors. A covenant, in its more techni- 
cal sense, according]to Turrettin, implies : 1. Two equal parties. 2. Lib- 
erty to do or not do the covenanted things before the covenant is formed. 
In this sense there could be no covenant between God and man. But 
in the more general sense of a conditional promise, such a transaction 
was evidently effected between God and Adam, and is recorded in Gen. 
ii : 16, 17. There are — 1st, the two parties. God proposing a certain 
blessing and penalty on certain conditions, and man coming under those 
conditions. It has been objected that it was no covenant because man's 
accession to it was not optional with him : God's terms were not a pro- 
posal made him, but a command laid upon him. I reply, if he did 
not have an option to accede or not, he was yet voluntary in doing so ; 
for no doubt his holy will joyfully concurred in the gracious plan. And 
such compacts between governors and governed are by no means unu- 
sual or unnatural. Witness all rewards promised by masters and 
teachers, for the performance of tasks, on certain conditions. 2. There 
was a condition : the keeping of God's command. Hd. There was a con- 
ditional promise and threat: life for obedience, and death for disobe- 
dience. That the promise of life was clearly implied is shown by the 
very fact that life is the correlative of the death threatened to disobe- 
dience — that the tree of life was the symbol of the blessing secured by 
keeping the covenant, and from many passages of Scripture which, in 
expounding the nature of this covenant, expressly say that life would 
have been the reward of a perfect obedience. Levit. xviii : 5 ; Deut. 
xxvii : 26 ; Ezek. xx : 11; Matt, xix: 17 : Gal. iii : 12. The fact that in 
some of these places the offer of life through the covenant of works was 
only made in order to apply an argument ad hominem to the self-righteous 
Jews, does not weaken this evidence. For the reason life cannot, in 
fact, be gained through that covenant is not that it was not truly pro- 
mised to man in it, and in good faith ; but that man has now become 



802 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

through the fall, morally incapable of keeping the condition. Last, the 
transaction is pretty clearly called a Covenant in Hos. vi : 7. 

Adam a Representative. — In this transaction Adam represented 
his posterity as well as himself. This appears from 1. The parallel 
which is drawn between Christ and Adam. Rom. v : 12-19; 1 Cor. 
xv: 22, 47. In almost every thing they are contrasted, yet Christ is 
the second Adam. The only parallelism is in the fact that they were 
both representative persons. 2. The fact proves it, that the penalty 
denounced on A-dam has actually taken effect on every one of his pos- 
terity. See Cen. v: 3. -3. The Bible declares that sin, death, and all 
penal evil came into the world through Adam. Rom. v : 12; 1 Cor. 
xv : 22. 4. Although the various other communications of the first 
three chapters of Genesis are apparently addressed to Adam singly, we 
know that they applied equally to his posterity, as the permission to 
eat of all the fruits of the earth ; the command to multiply and replen- 
ish the earth ; the threatened pains of child-bearing ; the curse of the 
ground, and the doom of labor, &c. 

V. Condition and Seal of Covenant. — The condition of the cov- 
enant was " perfect conformity of heart, and perfect obedience in act, 
to the whole will of God as far as revealed." The command to abstain 
from eating the forbidden fruit was only made a special and decisive 
test of that general obedience. " As the matter forbidden was morally 
indifferent in itself, the command was admirably adapted to be a clear 
and absolute test of submission to God's naked will as such." (Hodge.) 

The seal of the covenant is usually understood to be the tree of life, 
whose excellent fruit did not, indeed, medically work immortality in 
Adam's frame, but was appointed as a symbol and pledge, or seal of it. 
Hence, when he had forfeited the promise, he was debarred from the 
sign. The words of Gen. iii : 22 are to be understood sacramentally. 

The Probation Temporary. — Why is it supposed that an obedience 
for a limited time would have concluded the Covenant transaction 1 The 
answer is, that such a covenant, with an indefinite probation, would 
have been no covenant of life at all. The creature's estate would have 
been still forever mutable, and in no respect different from that in 
which creation itself placed him, under the first natural obligation to 
his Maker. Nay, in that case, man's estate would be rightly called 
desperate ; because, he being mutable aud finite, and still held forever 
under the curse of a law which he was, any day, liable to break, the 
probability that he would some day break it would in the infinite fu- 
ture mount up to a moral certainty. The Redeemer clearly implies 
that the probation was to be temporary, in saying to the young Ruler : 
" If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." If the proba- 
tion had no limits, his keeping them could never make him enter in. 



OF LECTURES IN" THEOLOGY. 209 

LECTURE XXV. 



SYLLABUS. 
THE PALL, AND OBIGINAL SIN. 

L "What is Sin? Is guilt its essence, or adjunct? 

Conf. of Faith, ch. »VI. Cat. que. 14. Turret-tin, Loc. IX, que. 1 and 3. 
Knapp, Art. IX, Lect. LXXIII. 

2. What was Adam's first sin ? How did it affect his own relations to (4od and 
moral state? How could a will prevalently holy form its first unholy volition ? 

Turrett., que. 6, 7, and 8. Hill, bk. IV, ch. 1. Dick, Lect. 46. Knapp, 
Lect. LXXXV. Watson, ch. IS, § II. 

3. Who was the tempter? What the sentence on him? 

Turrett., que. 7, §9, &c. Hill, as above, Dick, Lect. 44. Watson, as above. 

4. What were the effects of the Fall on Adam's posterity, a) according to the 
Pelagian theory ; b) the lower Arminian theory, as of Whitby ; c) the Wesleyan ; 
and d) the Calvinistic ? 

St. Augustine, vol. 2, ep. 899, c: vol. 7, De Natura et Gratia, and Libri 
duo adv. Pelag. & Crelest. Hill, as above. Turrett., que. 9 and 10. Dick, 
Lect. 46, 47. Whitby's Five" Points. Knapp, Lect. LXXIX. Watson's 
Theo. Inst., ch. 18, § III and IV. 

5. Are the souls of Adam's created, or generated, and how is original sin pro- 
pagated in them ? 

Turrett., que. 12, and Loc V, que. 13. Baird's Elohim Revealed, ch. 11th. 
Sampson on Hebr., XII, 9. Literary and Evangel. Mag. of Dr. Rice, vol. 
4, p. 2S5. Watson, ch. 18, §4. Augustine, De Origine Auimarum. 

We have now reached, in our inquiries, the disastrous place where 
Sin first entered our race. It is therefore proper that we pause, and 
ascertain clearly what is its nature. 

Sin, What ? — The Hebrew word most commonly used for it is hatah, 
which is supposed to carry the idea of a missing of the aim. The Greek 
hamautia is strikingly similar, expressing the same idea : while the 
Latin, peccatum, is by some supposed to be equivalent to pecuatum — 
bestiality. The abstract idea of sin, then, is of a negative : a lack of 
conformity to a standard. Sins, in the concrete, are, indeed, positive 
acts or states : their positive quality arises from the agent, their sinful- 
ness is still a privative quality. To this agrees strikingly the definition 
of 1 John iii : 4 : He hamartia esti anomia (scil, nomou theou). Some 
have supposed that the distinction of sins of omission from sins of com- 
mission, which is obviously just, is inconsistent with the assertion that 
sinfulness is always in its nature privative. But this is not so. The 
basis of that distinction is in the character of the commands to whicn 
the sins are related : sins of commission being breaches of prohibitory, 
and sins of'omission of affirmative precepts. The essential idea is still, 
in both cases (if I may coin a word), disconformity to the precept. It 
is objected, sins of commission consist in doing something, whereas 
sins of omission are refusing to do. I answer, the sinfulness is in the 
motive ; and this is, in either case, active, and its sinfulness is anomia. 

Concupiscence is Sin. — This raises again the oft mooted inquiry, 
whether inclinations to do evil, not yet assented to by volition, are sin- 
ful. The Catechism, as vehemently assailed herein by modern Pela- 
gians as ever Augustine was by the ancient, says : " Sin is any want o.f 



210 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God." The ethical 
argument on this point was presented in this course Lect. 9, § 8. I 
now merely add a summary of the scriptural. The Scriptures many 
times apply moral terms to the abiding habitudes of the soul, and these 
not only acquired but native. Ps. li : 5, lviii : 3 ; Matt, xii : 35, vii : 
17, xii : 33. Jas. i : 15 says: "Then when epithumeia hath conceived 
it bringth forth sin," &c. The relationship is so near, that mother 
and daughter must be expected to have one character. But most con- 
clusively, see Rom. vii : 7. Concupiscence was the very siu which con- 
victed him. 

Guilt, What? — What Turrettin calls 'potential guilt is the intrinsic 
moral ill-desert of an act or state. This is of the essence of the sin : 
it is indeed an insperable part of its sinfulness. Actual guilt is obliga- 
tion to punishment. This is the established technical sense of the word 
among theologians. Guilt, thus defined, is obviously not of the essence 
of sin ; but is a relation, viz., to the penal sanction of law. For if we 
suppose no penal sanction attached to the disregard of moral relations, 
guilt would not exist, though there were sin. This distinction will be 
found important. 

II. Man's First Sin. — The first sin of our first father is found de- 
scribed in Gen. iii : 1-7, in words which are familiar to every one. This 
narrative has evidently some of that picturesque character appropriate 
to the primeval age, and caused by the scarcity of abstract and definite 
terms in their language. But it is an obvious abuse to treat it as a 
mere allegory, representing under a figure man's self-depravation and 
gradual change : for the passages preceding and following it are evi- 
dently plain narrative, as is proved by a hundred references. More- 
over, the transactions of this very pas-age are twice referred to as lite- 
ral (2 Cor. xi : 3 ; 1 Tim. ii : 14), and the events are given as the expla- 
nation of the peculiar chastisement allotted to the daughters of Eve. 

Unbelief its First Element. — The sin of Adam consisted essen- 
tially, not in his bodily act, of course ; but in his intentions. Popish 
theologians usually say that the first element of the sin of his heart 
was pride, as being awakened by the taunting reference of the Serpent 
to his dependence and subjection, and as being unnatural in so exalted 
a being. The Protestants, with Turrettin, usually say it was unbelief; 
because pride could not be naturally suggested to the creature's soul, 
unless unbelief had gone before to obliterate his recollection of his 
proper relations to an infinite God; because belief of the mind usually 
dictates feeling and action in the will; because the temptation seems 
first aimed (Gen. iii: 1) to produce unbelief, through the creature's 
heedlessness; and because the initial element of error must have been 
in the understanding, the will being hitherto holy. 

If Volitions are certainly Determined. How could a Holy 
Being have his First Wrong Volition 1 — How a holy will could 
come to have an unholy volition at first, is a most difficult inquiry. 
And it is much harder as to the first sin of Satan than of Adam, be- 
cause the angel, hitherto perfect, had no tempter to mislead him, and 
had not even the bodily appetites for natural good which in Adam were 
so easily perverted into concupiscence. Concupiscence cannot be sup- 
posed to have been the cause, pre-existing before sin ; because concu- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 2ll 

piscence is sin, and needs itself to be accounted for in a holy heart, 
Man's, or Satan's, mutability cannot be the efficient cause, being only a 
condition sine qua non. Nor is it any solution to say with Turrettin. 
the proper cause was a free will perverted voluntarily. True ; but how 
came a right will to pervert itself while yet right] And here, let me 
say, is far the most plausible objection against the certainty of the will, 
which Anninians, &c, might urge far more cunningly than (to my sur- 
prise) they do. If the evil dispositions of a fallen sinner so determine 
his volitions as to ensure that he will not choose spiritual good, why did 
not the holy dispositions of Adam and Satan ensure that they would 
never have a volition spiritually evil 1 And if they somehow chose sin, 
contrary to their prevalent bent, why may not depraved man sometime 
choose good 1 

Ajtswer. — The mystery cannot be fully solved how the first evil 
choice could voluntarily arise in a holy soui ; but we can clearly prove 
that it is no sound reasoning from the certainty of a depraved will to 
that of a holy finite will. First : a finite creature can only be inde- 
fectible through the perpetual indwelling and superintendence of infi- 
nite wisdom and grace, guarding the finite and fallible attention of the 
soul against sin. This was righteously withheld from Satan and Adam. 
Second : while righteousness is a positive attribute, incipient sin is a 
negative one of human conduct. The mere absence of an element of 
active regard for God's will, constitutes a disposition or volition wrong. 
Now, while the positive requires a positive cause, it is not therefore in- 
ferrible that the negative equally demands a positive cause. To make 
a candle bum, it must be lighted; to make it go out, it need only be let 
alone. Now, the most probable account of the way sin entered a holy 
breast first, is this : An object was apprehended as in its mere nature 
desirable ; not yet as unlawful. So far there is no sin. But as the soul, 
finite and fallible in its attention, permitted an overweening apprehen- 
sion and desire of its natural- adaptation to confer pleasure, to override 
the feeling of its unlawfulness, concupiscence was developed. And the 
element which first caused the mere innocent sense of the natural good- 
ness of the object to pass into evil concupiscence, was negative, viz., the 
failure to consider and prefer God's will as the superior good to mere 
natural good. Thus natural desire passed into sinful selfishness, which 
is the root of all evil. So that we have only the negative element to 
account for. When we assert the certainty of ungodly choice in an 
evil will, we only assert that a state of volition whose moral quality is 
a defect, a negation, cannot become the cause of a positive righteous- 
ness. When we assert the mutability of a holy will in a finite crea- 
ture, we only say that the positive element of righteousness of disposi- 
tion may, in the shape of defect, admit the negative, not being infinite. 
So that the cases are not parallel ; and the result, though mysterious, 
is not impossible. To make a candle positively give light, it must be 

lighted ; to cause it to sink into darkness, it is only necessary to let it 

alone : its length being limited, it burns out. 

Effects of Sin in Adam — Self-Depravation. — Adam's fall re- 
sulted in two changes, moral and physical. The latter was brought on 
him by God's providence, cursing the earth for his sake, and thus en- 
tailing on him a life of toil and infirmities, ending in bodily death. The 
former was more immediately the natural and necessary result of his 



212 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

own conduct; because we caw conceive of G-od as interposing actively 
to punish sin, but we cannot conceive of Him as interposing to produce 
it. It has been supposed very unreasonable that one act, momentary, 
the breach of an unimportant, positive precept, should thus revolution- 
ize a man's moral habitudes and principles, destroying his original 
righteousness, and making him a depraved being. One act, they saj 7 , 
cannot form a habit. We will not answer this, by saying, with Tur- 
rettin, that the act virtually broke each precept of the decalogue; or 
that it was a " universal sin ; " nor even by pleading that it was an 
aggravated and great sin. Doubtless it was a great sin ; because it vio- 
lated the divine authority most distinctly and pointedly declared ; be- 
cause it did it for small temptation ; because it was a sin against great 
motives, privileges, and restraints. There is also much justice in Tur- 
rettin's other remarks, that by this clear, fully declared sin, the chief 
end of the creature was changed from God to self; and the chief end 
controls the whole stream of moral action directed to it ; that the au- 
thority on which all godliness reposes, was broken in breaking this one 
command; that shame and remorse were inevitably born in the soul ; 
that communion with G-od was severed. But this terrible fact, that 
any sin is mortal to the spiritual life of the soul, may profitably be far- 
ther illustrated. 

How Accounted for by Oxe Sin 1 — Note, that God's perfections 
necessitate that He shall be the righteous enemy and punisher of trans- 
gression. Man, as a moral and intelligent being, must have conscience 
and moral emotions. One inevitable effect of the first sin, then, must 
be that G-od is made righteously angry, and will feel the prompting to 
just punishment. (Else not a holy ruler !) Hence, He must at once 
withdraw His favour and communion (there being no Mediator to sat- 
isfy His justice.) Another inevitable effect must be, the birth of re- 
morse in the creature. The hitherto healthy action of conscience must 
ensure this. This remorse must be attended with an apprehension of 
G-od's anger, and fear of His punishment. But human nature always 
reciprocates by a sort of sympathy the hostility of which it knows itself 
the object. How many a man has learned to hate an inoffensive neigh- 
bour because he knows that he has given that neighbour good cause to 
hate him'? But this hostility is hostility to G-od for doing what He 
ought ; it is hostility to righteousness ! So that, in the first clearly pro- 
nounced sin, these elements of corruption and separation from God are 
necessarily contained in germ. But G-od is the model of excellence, 
and fountain of grace. See how fully these results are illustrated in 
Adam and Eve. G-en. iii : 8, &c. Next; every moral act has some 
tendency to foster the propensity which it indulges. Do you say it 
must be a very slight strength produced by one act; a very light bond 
of habit, consisting of one strand ! Not always. But the scale, if 
slightly turned, is turned ; the downhill career is begun, by at least one 
step, and the increase of momentum will surely occur, though gradually. 
Inordinate self-love has now become a principle of action, and it will, 
go on to assert its dominion. Last, we must consider the effects of phy- 
sical evil on a heart thus in incipient perversion; for God's justice 
must prompt Him to inflict the bodily evils due to the sin. Desire of 
happiness is instinctive ; when the joys of innocence are lost, an indem- 
nification and substitute will be sought in carnal pleasures. Misery 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 21 8 

developes the malignant passions of envy, petulance, impatience, sel- 
fishness, revenge. And nothing is more depraving than despair. See 
Jer. ii : 25, xviii : 12. 

What a terrible evil, then, is Sin ! Thus the sentence, "In the day 
thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die," carried its own execution. 
Sin, of itself, kills the spiritual life of the soul. 

III. Satan the Tempter. — The true tempter of Adam and Eve 
was undoubtedly the evil aDgel Satan, although it is not expressly said 
so in the narrative. A serpent has no speech, still less has it under- 
standing to comprehend man's moral relations and interests, and that 
refined spiritual malice which would plan the ruin of the soul. It is 
said, " the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field," as 
though this natural superiority of animal instincts were what enabled 
it to do the work. A moment's thought, however, must convince us 
that there is a deeper meaning. Moses, speaking for the time as the 
mere historian, describes events as they appeared to Eve. The well 
known cunning of the serpent adapted it better for Satan's use, and 
enabled him to conceal himself under it with less chance of detection. 
The grounds for regarding Satan as the true agent are the obvious allu- 
sions of Scripture. See Jno. viii : 44 ; 2 Cor. xi : 3 ; 1 TLess. iii : 5 ; 1 
Jno. iii : 8 ; Rev. xii : 9, and xx : 2. The doom of the serpent is also 
allusively applied to Christ's triumph over Satan. Col. ii : 15; Rom, 
xvi: 20; Heb. ii : 14; Is. lxv : 25. It is also stated in confirmation, by 
Dr. Hill, that this was the traditionary interpretation of the Jews, as 
is indicated, for instance, in Wis. ii : 23, 24 ; Ecclus. xxv : 24, and the 
Chaldee paraphrast on Job xx : 4, 6. Turrettin supposes that God's 
providence permitted the employment of an animal as the instrument 
of Satan's temptation in order that mankind might have before them 
a visible commemoration of their sin and fall. 

IV. Effect of Adam's Sen on His Posterity — Pelagian Theory. 
I propose to state the Pelagian theory with some degree of fulness, and 
more methodically than it would perhaps be found stated in the writ- 
ings of its own early advocates, in order to unfold to the student the 
nexus between original sin and the whole plan of redemption. The 
Pelagian believes that Adam's fall did not directly affect his posterity 
at all. Infants are born in the same state in which Adam was created, 
one of innocence, but not of positive righteousness. There was no fed- 
eral transaction, and no imputation, which is, in every case, incompati- 
ble with justice. There is no propagation of hereditary depravity, 
which would imply the generation of souls ex traduce, which they re- 
ject. Man's will is not only free from coaction, but from moral cer- 
tainty ; i. e., his volitions are not only free, but not decisively caused, 
otherwise he would not be a free agent. 

b.) If this is so, whence the universal actual transgression of adult 
man 1 Pelagianism answers, from concupiscence, which exists in all, as 
in Adam before his sin, and is not sin of itself, and from general evil 
example. 

c.) If man has no moral character, and no guilt prior to intelligent 
choice, whence death and suffering among those who have not sinned ? 
They are obliged to answer : These natural evils are not penal, and 
would have befallen Adam any how. They are the natural limitations 



214 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

of humanity, just as irrationality is of beasts, and no more imply guilt 
as their necessary cause. 

d.) Those, then, who die in infancy, have nothing from -which they 
need to be redeemed. Why then baptized 1 Pelagianism answered, 
those who die in infancy are redeemed from nothing. If they die unbap- 
tized, they would go to a state called Paradise, the state of natural 
good, proceeding from natural innocence, to which innocent Pagans go. 
But baptism would interest them in Christ's gracious purchase, and 
thus they would inherit, should they die in infancy, a more positive 
and assured state of blessedness, called the Kingdom of Heaven. 

e.) All men being born innocent, and with equilibrium of will, it is 
both physically and morally possible that any man might act a holy 
character, and attain Paradise, or "eternal life," without any gospel 
grace whatever. The chances may be bad, on account of unfavourable 
example, and temptation, amidst which the experiment has to be made. 
But there have been cases, both under the revealed law, as Enoch, Job, 
Abel, Noah (who had no proteuangelium) ; and among Pagans, as Numa, 
Aristides, Socrates ; and there maybe such cases again. Nor would 
God be just to punish man for coming short of perfection unless this 
were so. 

f.) Now, as to the theory of redemption : As there can be no impu- 
tation of Adam's guilt to his people, so neither could there be of 
Christ's people's guilt to Him, or of His righteousness to them. But 
sins are forgiven by the mercy of Grod in Christ (without penal satis- 
faction for them), on the condition of trust, repentance, and reforma- 
tion. The title of the believer to a complete justification must then be 
his own obedience, and that a sinless one. But this is not so exalted an 
attainment as Calvinists now regard it. Concupiscence is not sin. Mo- 
ral quality attaches only to actual volitions, not to states of feeling 
prompting thereto ; and hence, if an act be formally right, it is wholly 
right ; nor does a mixture of selfish and unselfish motives in it make it 
imperfectly moral ; for volition is necessarily a thing decisive and entire. 
Hence, a prevalent, uniform obedience is a perfect one ; and none less 
will justify, because justification is by works, and the law is perfect. 
But as equilibrium of will is essential to responsibility, any shortcoming 
which is morally necessitated, by infirmity of nature, or ignorance, 
thoughtlessness, or overwhelming gust of temptation, contrary to the 
soul's prevalent bent, is no sin at all. See here, the nest-egg of the 
Wesleyan's doctrine of sinless perfection, and of the Jesuit theory of 
morals. 

Since a concreated righteousness would be no righteousness, not being 
chosen at first, so neither would a righteousness wrought by a super- 
natural regeneration. The only gracious influences possible are those 
of co-operative grace, or moral suasion. Man's regeneration is simply 
his own change of purpose, as to sin and holiness, influenced by motives. 
Hence, faith and repentance are both natural exercises. 

g.) The continuance of a soul in a state of justification is of course 
contingent. A grace which would morally necessitate the will to con- 
tinued holy choices, would deprive it of its free ageucy. 

h.) God's purpose of election, therefore, while from eternity, as is 
shown by His infinite and immutable wisdom, knowledge and power, is 



OF LECTURES m THEOLOGY. 215 

conditioned on His foresight of the way men would improve their free 
will. He elected those He foresaw would persevere in good. 

The whole is a consistent and well knit system of error, proceeding 
from its proton pseudos. 

Arminiast Theories. 1. Lower. — Among those who pass under the 
general term, Arminians, two different schemes have been advanced ; 
one represented by Whitby, the other by Wesley and his Church. The 
former admit that Adam and his race were both much injured by the 
fall. He has not indeed lost his equilibrium of will for spiritual good, 
but he has become greatly alienated from God, has fallen under the 
penal curse of physical evil and death, has become more animal, so that 
concupiscence is greatly exasperated, and is more prone to break out into 
actual transgression. This is greatly increased by the miseries, fear, 
remorse, and vexation of his mortal state, which tend to drive him away 
from God, and to whet the envious, sensual, and discontented emotions. 
These influences, together with constant evil example, are the solution 
of the fact, that all men become practically sinners. This is the state 
to which Adam reduced himself; and his posterity share it, not in virtue 
of any federal relation, or imputation of Adam's guilt, but of that uni- 
versal, physical law, that like must generate like. In that sense, man 
is born a ruined creature. 

2. Wesleyan. — The Wesleyans, however, begin by admitting all 
that a Moderate Calvinist would ask, as to Adam's loss of original 
righteousness in the Fall, bondage under evil desires, arid total deprav- 
ity. While they misinterpret, and then reject the term imputation of 
Adam's guilt, they retain the idea, admitting that the legal conse- 
quences of Adam's act are visited on his descendants along with him- 
self. But then, they say, the objections of severity and unrighteousness 
urged against this plan could not be met, unless it be considered as one 
whole, embracing man's gracious connexion with the second Adam. "By 
the Covenant of grace in Him, the self-determining power of the will, 
and ability of will are purchased back for every member of the human 
family, and actually communicated, by common sufficient grace, to all, 
so far repairing the effects of the fall, that man has moral ability for 
spiritual good, if he chooses to employ it. Thus, while they give us 
the true doctrine with one hand, they take it back with the other, and 
reach a Semi-Pelagian result. The obvious objection to this scheme 
is, that if the effects of Adam's fall on his posterity are such, that they 
would have been unjust, if not repaired by a redeeming plan which was 
to follow it, as a part of the same system, then God's act in giving a 
Redeemer was not one of pure grace (as Scripture everywhere says,) 
but He was under obligations to do some such thing. 

Calvinistic theory. — The view of the Calvinists I purpose now to 
state in that comprehensive and natural mode, iu which all sound Cal- 
vinists would concur. Looking into the Bible and the actual world, 
we find that, whereas Adam wascreated righteous, and with full ability 
of will for all good, and was in a state of actual blessedness, ever since 
his fall, his posterity begin their existence in a far different state. They 
all show, universal ungodliness, clearly proving a "native, prevalent, and 
universal tendency thereto. They are bom spiritually dead, as Adam 
made himself. And they are obviously, natural heirs of the physical 



216 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

evils and death pronounced on him for his sin. Such are the grand facts. 
Now Galvinists consider that it is no unauthorized hypothesis, but mere- 
ly a coanected statement, and inevitable interpretation of the facts to 
say : that we see in them this arrangement : God was pleased, for wise, 
gracious, and righteous reasons, to connect the destiny of Adam's pos- 
terity with his probationary acts, so making him their representative, 
that whatever moral, and whatever legal condition he procured for him- 
self by his conduct under probation ; in that same moral and that same 
legal conditon his posterity should begin to exist. And this, we say, is no 
more than the explanation necessarily implied in the facts themselves. 

V. Origin of Souls. History of opinions. — But before we proceed 
to the detailed discussion of this, an inquiry, a subject of the greatest 
intricacy and interest arises as a preliminary: How is this connexion 
transmitted ; what is the actual tie of nature between parents and chil- 
dren, as to their more essential part, the soul t Are human souls gen- 
erated by their parents naturally ? Or are they created directly by God, 
and sent into connexion with the young body at the time it acquires its 
separate vitality? The former has been called the theory of Tradu- 
cianism ; (ex traduce,) the latter, of creation. After Origen's doctrine 
of pre-existent human souls had been generally surrendered as heretical 
(from the times of Chrysostom, say 403,) the question was studied with 
much interest in the early church. Tertullian, who seems first to have 
formally stated Adam's federal headship, was also the inventor of the 
ex traduce theory. But it found few advocates among the Fathers, and 
was especially opposed by those who had strong tendencies to what was 
afterwards called Pelagianism, as favouring original sin. Gregory of 
Nyssa seems to have been almost alone among the prominent Greek 
Fathers, who held it. So perhaps did Ambrose among tne Latins; but 
when Jerome asserts that the ex traduce view prevailed generally among 
the Western Christians, he was probably in error. Augustine, the 
great establisher of Original Sin, professed himself undecided about it, 
to the end. It may be said however, in general, that in history, the 
ex traduce theory has been thought more favourable to original sin, and 
has been usually connected with it till modern times; while Creation- 
ism was strenuously advocated by Pelagians. If the Traducian theory 
can be substantiated, it most obviously presents the best explanation of 
the propagation of sin. 

I shall state the usual arguments, pro and con, indicating as I go 
along my judgment of their force. 

Arguments of Traducianists — From Scripture. — 1. The Tradu- 
cianists assert that by some inexplicable law ot generation, though a 
true and proper one, parents propagate souls, as truly as bodies ; and 
are thus the proper parents of the whole persons of their children. 
They argue, from Scripture, that Gen ii : 2 states, "on the seventh day 
God ended the work which He had made, and He rested on the seventh 
day from all His work,'' &c. Hence, they infer, God performs since no 
proper work of immediate creation in this earth. This seems hardly 
valid; for the sense of the text might seem satisfied by the idea that 
God now creates nothing new as to species. With a great deal more 
force, it is argued that in Gen. i : 25-28, God creates man in His own 
image, after His own likeness, which imago is proved to bo not corpo- 



OF LFCTURFS IN THEOLOGY. 21? 

feal at all, but in man's spirituality, intelligence, immortality, and 
righteousness. In Gen. v : : 3, "Adam begat a son in his own likeness, 
after his image." How could this be, if Adam's parental agency did 
not produce the soul, in which alone this image inheres 1 Surely the 
image and likeness is in the same aspects-. See also Ps. li j 5 : Job xiv s 
4; Jno t iiii 6, &c. The purity or impurity spoken of in all these pas- 
sages is of the soul, and they must therefore imply the propagation of 
souls, when so expressly stating the propagation of impurity of soul. 

From Experience and from: Imputation.— ^They also argue that 
popular opinion and common sense clearly regard the parents as parents 
of the whole person. The same thing is shown by the inheritance of 
mental peculiarities and family traits, whicn are often as marked as 
bodily. And this cannot be accounted for by education, because often 
Been where the parents did not live to rear the child; nor by the fact 
that the body with its animal appetites, in which the soul is encased, 
may be the true cause of the apparent hereditary likeness of souls; 
for the just theory is that souls influence bodies in these things, not 
bodies souls ; and besides, the traits of resemblance are often not only 
passional, but intellectual. Instances of congenital lunacy ; Lunacy is 
plausibly explained as a loss of balance of soul, through the undue pre- 
dominance of some one trait. Now, these cases of congenital lunacy 
•are most frequently found in the offspring of cousins. The resemblance 
of traits in the parents being already great, " breeding in and in " 
snakes the family trait too strong, and hence derangement. But the 
chief arguments from reason are i if God creates souls, as immediately 
as He created Adam's or Gabriel, then they must have come from His 
hand morally pure, for God cannot create Wickedness., How, then, can 
depravity be propagated? The Bible would be contradicted, which so 
clearly speaks of it as propagated-; and reason, which says that the at- 
tachment of a holy soul to a body cannot defile it, because a mere body 
lias no moral character. Creationists answer : the federal relation in- 
stituted between Adam and the race, justifies God in ordaining it so 
that the connexion of the young immortal spirit with the body, and 
thus with a depraved race, shall be the occasion for its depravation, in 
Consequence of imputed sin. But the reply is, first, it is impossible to 
explain the federal relation, if the soul of each child (the soul alone is 
the true moral agent), had an antecedent holy existence, independent 
of a human father. Why is not that soul as independent of Adam's 
Fall, thus far, as Gabriel was; and why is not the arrangements which 
implicates him in it just as arbitrary as though Gabriel were tied to 
Adanvs fate i Moreover, if God's act in plunging this pure spirit into 
an impure body is the immediate occasion of its becoming depraved, it 
conies very near to making God the author of its fall. Last : a mere 
body has no moral character, and to suppose it taints the soul is mere 
Gnosticism. Hence, it must be that the souls of children are the off- 
springs of their parents. The mode cf that propagation is inscrutable; 
but this constitutes no disproof, because a hundred other indisputable 
operations of natural law are equally inscrutable ; and especially in 
this case of spirits, where the nature of the substance is inscrutable, we 
should expect the manner of its production to be so. 

Arguments of Creationists. — 2. On the other hand, the advocates 
of creation of souls argue from such texts as Eccl. xiu 7 ; Is. lvii: 16 $ 



218 SYIXABXTS AND NOTES' 

Zech. xii : 1 ; Heb. xii : 9, where our souls are spoken of as the' special 
work of God. It is replied, and the reply seems to me sufficient, that 
the language of these passages is sufficiently met, by recognizing the 
fact that God's power at first produced man's soul immediately out of 
nothing, and in His own image; that the continued propagation of these 
souls is under laws which His Providence sustains and directs; and that 
this ageney of God is claimed as an especial honour, (e. g. in Is. lvii : 
16,) because human souls are the most noble part of God's earthly king- 
dom, being intelligent, moral, and capable of apprehending His glory. 
That this is the true sense of Eccl. xii : 7, and that it should not be 
strained any higher,- appears thus ; if the language proves that the soul 
of a man of our generation came immediately from God's hand, like- 
Adam's, the antithesis would equally prove that our bodies came equally 
from the dust, as immediately as Adam's. To all such passages as Is.- 
lvii : 16 ; 2ech. xii ■>. 1, the above general considerations apply, and in 
addition, these facts: Oar parents are often spoken of in Scripture m 
authors of our existence likewise : and that in general terms, inclusive 
of the spirit. Gen. xlvi : 26, 27 ; Frov. xvii : 21 ; xxiii : 24 ; Is. xlv r 
10. Surely^ if one of these classes of texts may be so strained, the other 
may equally, and then we have texts directly contradicting texts.- 
Again, God is ealled the Creator of the animals, Ps. civ ^ 80, and the 
adorner of the lilies, Matt, vi : 30 ; which are notoriously produced by 
propagation. In Heb. xii: 9, the pronoun in 6 ' Father of our spirits,"' 
is unauthorized. The meaning is simply the contrast between the 
general ideas of " earthly fathers," and " heavenly father." For if you 
make the latter clause, " Father of spirits" moan Creator of our souls, 
then, by antithesis, the former should be read, fathers of our bodies ; 
but this neither the apostle's scope permits, nor the word Sarx, which 
never means, in bis language, our bodies as opposed to our souls; - 
but our natural, as opposed to our gracious condition of soul. 

Again: Turrettin objects, that if Adam's soul was created, and our's 
propagated, we do not properly bear his image, 1 Cor. xv *■ 47-8, nor 
are of his species. The obvious answer is, that by the same argument 
we could not be of the same corporeal species at all ! Further, the very 
idea of species is a propagated identity of nature, But the strongest 
rational objections are, that a generative process implies the separation 
of parts of the parent substances, and their aggregation into a new organ" 
ism : whereas the souls of the parents, and that of the offspring are alike 
monads, indiscerptible, and uncompounded. Traducianism is therefore 
vehemently accused of materialist tendencies. It seems to me that all 
this is but an argmnentum ad ignorantiam. Of course, spirits cannot be 
generated by separation of substance and new eompoundings. But 
whether processes of propagation may not be possible for spiritual sub" 
stance which involve none of this, is the very question, which can be 
neither proved nor disproved by us, because we do not comprehend the 
true substance of spirit. 

Gravest objection against Traducianism.— The opponents might 
have advanced a more formidable objection against Traducianism ; and 
this is the true difficulty of the theory. In every case of the generation 
of organisms, there is no production of any really new substance by the 
creature-parents, but only a re-organizing of pre-existent particles. But 
we believe a soul is a spiritual atom, and is brought into existence out 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 219 

©f non-existence. Have human parents this highest creative power ? 
With such difficulties besetting both sides, it will be best perhaps, to 
leave the subject as an insoluble mystery. What an opprobrium to the 
pride of human philosophy, that it should be unable to answer the very 
first and nearest question as to its own origin ! 

The humble mind may perhaps find its satisfaction in this Bible truth : 
That whatever may be the adjustment adopted for the respective shares 
of agency which the First Cause, and second causes have in the origin 
of an immortal human soul; this fact is certain (however unexplained) 
that parents and children are somehow united into one federal body by 
a true tie of race : that the tie does include the spiritual as well as the 
bodily substances; that it is bona fide, and not fictitious or suppositious. 
See Confession of Faith, €h. 6, § 3 . "Root of all mankind." Now 
since we have no real cognition by perception, of spiritual substance, 
but only know its acts and effects, we should not be surpris-ed at our 
ignorance of the precise agency of its production ; and the way that 
agency acts. It may not be explained ; and yet it may be true, that 
divine power, (in bringing substance out of nihil into esse) and human 
causation may both act, in originating the being and properties of the 
infant's soul. 

May not the fact that souls can generate souls, inscrutably, throw 
some light on the generation of Christ 1 "But analogy, must be imper- 
fect ; for in the. case of the second person, there are not two substances. 



LECTUKE XXVI. 



SYLLABUS. 

ORIGINAL SIN. (Continued.) 

t5. What is Original Sin ? What is meant by total depravity ? and does it affect 
the whole man in all faculties and capacities f 

Conf. of Faith, Ch. vi, § 3. Cat. Qu. 18. Turrett. Qu. 8, 10, and 11. Dick, 
Lect. 46, 47. Hill, Bk. IV, Oh. 1. Watson, as above. 

7. How is the existence of this total depravity proved ; a.) From facts, b.) 
From Scripture ? Are any secular virtues of the unrenewed genuine ? 

Turrett. Qu. 10. Dick and Hill, as above. Edwards on Original Sin, Pt. 
I, Ch. 1, and 2; Pt. II, Ch. 2, 3 ; Pt. Ill, Ch. 1 and 2. 

8. Define and prove the imputation of the guilt of Adam's first sin to his pos- 
terity. 

Turrett. Qu. 9, 12, and 15. Dick and Hill, as above. 

Edwards on Original Sin, Pt. II, Ch. 1 and 4; Ft. Ill, Ch. 1 and 2. 
Boardman on Original Sin, Wines' " Adam and Christ." Knapp, Sect. 
LXXVI. Watson, Ch. IS, § III, 

VI. " The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell, consists of 
the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, and 



220 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original 
sin ; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it." 

Here, as in the Larger Catechism, Original Sin (so called because 
native, and because the fountain of all other sin) is the general term, 
expressing both elements, of imputed guilt, and total depravity. By 
many theologians it is often used for the latter specially. I discuss the 
latter first. 

Original Sin a positive bent to wrong. — Turrettin asserts that 
this total depravity is not merely or negatively a carentia justitia? origi- 
nalis but positively, an active principle of evil. But this does not contra- 
dict the definition which represented the essence of sin as disconformity 
to law. The essential nature of virtue is, that it positively, or affirma- 
tively requires something ; or makes a given state or act positively obli- 
gatory on the human heart. It admits no moral neutrality ; so that the 
simply not being, or not doing what God requires, is Sin. But the soul 
is essentially active. Hence it follows, that in a sinful state or act, the 
action or positivity of the sin is from the essential nature of the soul, 
its wrongness is from the mere absence of conformity to law. Depravi- 
ty, as Brest. Edwards says, is a defective or privative quality ; yet it 
assume? a positive form. I would prefer to say that depravity is active 
as opposed to simple negation. That it is active, is proved by Turret- 
tin from those texts which attribute effects to it, as binding, deceiving, 
and laying, &c. Yet it is also important to distinguish that it is, in its 
origin, privative, and not the infusion of some positive quality of evil 
into the soul ; in order to acquit God of the charge of being author of 
sin. 

But not a corruption of the Soul's substance. — The same rea- 
son compels us to believe that native depravity is not a substantial cor- 
ruption of the soul : i. e., does not change or destroy any part of its 
substance. For souls are, as to their substance, what God made them ; 
and His perfections ensure His not making anything that was not good. 
Nor is there any loss of any of the capacities or faculties, which make 
up the essentia of the soul. Man is, in these respects, essentially what 
his Creator made him. Hence depravity is, in the language of meta- 
physics, not an attribute, but an accident of the human soul now. This 
is further proved by the fact that Jesus Christ assumed our very nature, 
at His incarnation, without which He would not be our Mediator. But 
surely, He did not assume moral corruption ! Last : Scripture clearly 
distinguishes between sin and the soul, when they speak of it as de- 
filing the soul, as easily besetting ; Heb. xii : 1, 2, &c. If it be asked, 
what then, is native depravity : if it be neither a faculty, nor the pri- 
vation of one, nor of the man's essence, nor a change of substance? I 
reply, it is a vicious habitude of acting, which qualifies man's active 
powers, i. e. his capacities of feeling and will. Although we may not 
be able to fully describe, yet we all know this idea of habitudes, which 
naturally qualify the powers of action, in all things. 

Depravity Total. — The Cofession states that the first man "became 
wholly defiled, in all the faculties and parts of soul and body." The 
seat of this vicious moral habitude is, of course, strictly speaking, in 
the moral propensities. But since these give active direction to all the 
faculties and parts of soul and body, in actions that have any moral 
quality, it may be said that, by accommodation of language, they are 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 221 

all morally defiled. The conscience (the highest department of rational 
intuitions) is not indeed destroyed ; but its accuracy of verdict is 
greatly disturbed by evil desire, and the instinctive moral emotions 
which should accompany those verdicts, are so seared by neglect as to 
.seem practically feeble, or dead, for the time. The views of the un- 
derstanding concerning all moral subjects are perverted by the wrong 
propensions of the heart, so as to call good evil, and evil good. Thus 
"blindness of mind" on all moral subjects results. The memory be- 
comes a store of corrupt images and recollections, and thus furnishes 
material for the imagination; defiling both. The corporeal appetites, 
being stimulated by the lusts of the soul, by a defiled memory and 
imagination, and by unbridled indulgence, become tyrannical and in- 
ordinate. And the bodily limbs and organs of sense are made servants 
of unrighteousness. Thus, what cannot be literally unholy is put to 
unholy uses. 

In what sense total? And are all natural virtues spurious? 
— By saying that man's native depravity is total, we do not by any 
means intend that conscience is destroyed, for the man's guilt is evinced 
by this very thing, that his heart prefers what conscience condemns. 
Nor do we mean that all men are alike bad, and all as bad as they can 
be. Nor do we mean to impugn the genuineness and disinterestedness 
of the social virtues and charities in the ungodly. Far be it from us 
to assert that all the civic rectitude of an Aristides or Fabricin, all 
the charities of domestic love, all the nobleness of disinterested friend- 
ship among the worldly, are selfishness in disguise. But if it be al- 
lowed that many of these acts are of the true nature of virtue, how 
can man be called totally depraved 1 But we mean, first, that as to 
the chief responsibility of the soul, to love God, every soul is totally 
recreant. No natural man has any true love for God as a spiritual, 
holy, true, good, and righteous Sovereign. But this being the pre- 
eminent duty over all others in the aggregate, utter dereliction here, 
throws all smaller, partial virtues wholly into the shade. Second; 
while there is something of true virtue in many secular acts and feel- 
ings of the unrenewed, which deserves the sincere approval and grati- 
tude of fellow-men to them, as between man and man, there is in those 
same acts and feelings a fatal defect as to God, which places them on 
the wrong side of the moral dividing line. That defect is, that they 
are not prompted by any moral regard for God's will requiring them. 
(Illustrate.) " God is not in all their thoughts." Ps. x : 4. Let any 
worldly man analyzes his motives, and he will find that this is true of 
his best secular acts. But the supreme regard ought to be, in every 
act, the desire to please God. Hence, although these secular virtues 
are much less wrong than their opposite vices, they are still, in God's 
sight, short of right, and that in the most important particular. Third ; 
native depravity is total, because it sets man on the descending scale, 
from which there is no adequate recuperative power in him. His in- 
evitable tendency is to progressive, and at last, to utter depravity. He 
is spiritually dead — the corpse may be little emaciated, it may be still 
warm, still supple, may still have colour on its cheek, and a smile on 
its lips — but it is a corpse : and will putrefy in due time. 

VII. The proofs of a total native depravity are, unfortunately, so 
numerous, that little more can be attempted in one Lecture than a 



222 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

statement of their heads. They may be grouped under the two heads 
of experience and 'Scripture statements and facts. 

1. Depravity of the Race proved, 1st, by law of reproductions 
— Adam's sin reduced him to a total depravity, as has been shown in 
a previous Lecture. But the great law, which seems to reign through- 
out the vegetable and sentient universe, wherever a law of reproduc- 
tion reigns, is that like shall beget like. And this appears to be con- 
firmed by G-en. v; 3; Job. xiv : 4. Whence Adam's ruin would be a 
priori, a ground for expecting hi? posterity to be born depraved. There 
are indeed some, as Br. Thornwell, Review of Breckinridge, January, 
1858, who deny that this law would naturally apply here, and attrib- 
ute the result of Adam's producing a sinful posterity, exclusively to 
the positive federal connexion appointed for them. They urge, that 
the thing propagated by this natural law is the attributes of the spe- 
cses, not its accidents; that by this cause any other progenitor between 
us and our first father would be as much the source of our depravity 
as he; and that if the accident of Adam's fall is propagated, so ought 
to be the regenerate nature produced in him, and in other progenitors, 
by grace. This is clearly against the Confession, ch. 6, § 3, and, it 
seems to me, against the texts quoted. It confounds accidents in the 
popular sense with accidents in the sense of the Logician. Very true ; 
a man who loses 1 an arm by accident, does not propagate one-armed 
children. But in the other sense of the word, it will hardly be as- 
serted that the red colour of Devon cattle are attributes and not acci- 
dents of horned cattle, and the more refractory and savage temper of 
the wild boar attributes of the species swine; yet both are propagated 
by this law of generation. As I have before said, the properties which 
define a species, whether attributes or accidents, are just those which 
are propagated in it ; this is the very idea of species. Regenerate 
character does not define the species man, as a species ; and hence, is 
not propagated, especially as it is a character only incipient in the pa- 
rents in this life. Chiefly, regenerate character is not propagated by 
parents, because it is not a natural, but a supernatural property. 

2. By Universal Sin. — We argue native depravity from the univer- 
sal sinfulness of man, as exhibited in fact. Premise, that the strength 
of this argument ought to be judged according to the tendencies which 
this prevalent ungodliness would exert, not as it is in fact, but as it 
would be, if unrestrained by the grace and providence of God. What 
then is the fact? We see all men, under all circumstances, do much 
that is wrong. We see the world full of wickedness, much of it enor- 
mous. We behold parents, masters, magistrates and teachers busy 
with multitudes of rules and laws, and a vast apparatus of prisons, po- 
lice, armies, aad penalties, striving with very indifferent success, to re- 
press wickedness. It is no alleviation to this picture to say, that there 
are also many virtues in the world, and more correct people who leave 
no history, t because they quietly pursue a virtuous life, than of those who 
make a noise in the world by sin. For the majority of men are rela- 
tively wicked, taking the world over ; and a truly honourable secular 
character, even, is the exception. Again ; as we have seen, all these 
virtues contain a fatal defect, that of not being performed for God's 
honour and pleasure ; a defect so vital, that it throws any element of 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 223 

goodness as to man wholly into the shade. Take the s-taudard r "Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," and it will be seen 
that the best natural man in the world never comes up to it in any one 
act. How then can he claim any good acts to balance against his bad 
ones, when there are none at all wholly in the right scale '] None that 
are in the right scale as to the most weighty particular. 

By EARLY APOSTASY OF CHILDREN FB03I THE RIGHT.- — Again : the 

universal result of the growth of human beings is, that as soon as they 
are old enough to exhibit any moral qualities in intelligent action, they 
exhibit some wrong ones. And thenceforward, their doing some wrong 
things is a constant occurrence, not an occasional accident. Yea, more : 
infants, before they are old enough to understand their own evil tem- 
pers, show wicked tempers, selfishness, anger, spite, revenge. So testi- 
fies Scripture. Ps. lviii : 3 ; Gen. viii : 21. 

By opposition to God and Redemption. — Once more, we find uni- 
versally, a most obdurate blindness, stupidity, and opposition concern- 
ing the things of God. Rom. viii ; 7. So averse are'men to the spirit- 
ual service of God, that they all, if left to themselves, postpone and 
refuse it, against the dictates of reason and conscience, which they par- 
tially obey in other things, against motives absolutely infinite • and, such 
is the portentous power of this opposition^ it overrides these motives 
and influences usually without a seeming struggle. This universal 
prevalence of sin has appeared in man's history, in spite of great means 
for its prevention .' not only by the legislation, &c, mentioned ', but by 
chastisements, the Flood, religious dispensations, miracles, theophanies, 
prophecies, and the incarnation of Christ Himself. 

By Scripture. — Such is a fair and moderate picture of human expe- 
rience. Scripture confirms it, asserting the universal and prevalent 
sinfulness of man. Gen. vi : 5 ; 1 Kings viii : 46 ; EccL vii : 20 ; Ps. 
cxliii : 2 ; Gal. iii : 22 ; Rom. iii ; 10-18 ; Jas. iii ; 1, 2 ; Eccl. ix : 3, 
&c, &c. ; Ps. xiv ; 2, 3 ; Jer. xvii : 9. 

Universal effects require a cause. — Now an effect requires a 
cause. Here is an effect, occurring under every variety of outward con- 
dition and influences, universal, constantly recurring, appearing imme- 
diately the time arrives in the human being's life which permits it. 
There must be a universal cause, and that, within the human being 
himself. We may not be able to comprehend exactly how a moral hab- 
itude subsists in an undeveloped reason and conscience ; but we are just 
as sure, that there is an innate germinal cause, in the human being's 
moral nature, for all these moral results-, as we are that there is, in 
young apes, an innate cause why no nurture or outward circumstances 
will ever by any possibility develope one of them into a Newton, This 
intuition is confirmed by Scripture. Luke vi : 43-45, &c. ; Ps. lviii : 3, 
with verse 4. 

3. Argument and prevalence of The Curse. — 'The universal 
prevalence of bodily death, with its premonitory ills, of bodily infirmi- 
ty, a cursed ground, toil and hardship, show that man's depravity is 
total and native. These ills are a part of the great threatening made 
against Adam, and when inflicted on him, it was in immediate connex- 
ion with spiritual death. Why suppose them severed, in any other case 1 
It is vain to say that these things are not now the curse of sin, but a 
wholesome chastisement and restraint, and thus a blessing in disguise ; 



224 SYLLABtTS AND NOTES 

for if man were not depraved, he would not need such a lesson. Why 
does not God see that Paradise is still man's most wholesome state, as 
it was Adam*s 1 But from Gen. ii : 17, onward, death is always spoken 
of as a punishment fof sin. Then, where death goes, sin must have 
gone. Rom. v : 12 ; 1 Cor. xv \ 22. Especially the death of infants 
proves it ; because they cannot understand the disciplinary effects of 
Buffering and death. See especially the cases of the infants of Sodom, 
of Canaan^ of Jerusalem^ in EiSek. is t 6. Nor can it be said that in^ 
fants die only by the imputed guilt of Adam's sin ; for imputed guilt 
and actual depravity are never found separated in the natural man. 

4 FroM need of Redemption.— ^The fact that all need, and some of 
all classes are interested in the redemption of Jesus Christ, proves that 
all have a sin of nature. For if they were not sinners*, they would not 
be susceptible' of redemption. Among the Redeemed are "elect infants 
dying in infancy/' as is proved by Luke xviii : 16 ; Matt, xxi t 16 4 But 
infants have no actual transgressions to be redeemed from ! Socinians 
and Pelagians talk of a redemption in their case$ which consists neither 
in an actual regeneration nor atonement t, but in their resurrection, and 
their being endued with a gracious and assured blessedness. But this 
is a mere abuse of Scripture to speak of such a process as the redeem- 
ing work of Christ for any human being. For His very name and mis- 
sion were from the fact that He was to save His people from their si?is. 
Matt, i : 21 ; 1 Tim. i l 15 ; Mark ii i 17 ; Gal, ii ; 21 ; iii : 21. Christ 
Was sent to save men from perishing. Jno, iii: 16. His redemption is 
always by bloody because this typifies the atonement for sin. Sin is 
therefore coextensive with redemption!, 

From Regeneration.-— Again \ the application of this redemption 
in effectual calling is evidence of native depravity. In order that 
Christ may become ours*, it is most repeatedly declared, that we must 
be born again. This regeneration is a radical moral change, being not 
merely a change of purpose of life made by a volition, but a revolution 
of the propensities which prompt otlr purposes. This is proved by the 
names used to describe the change, a new birth, a new creation, a 
quickening from death,, a resurrection, and from the Agent, which is 
not the truth, or motive, but almighty God. See Jno k iii: 5; Eph. it 
19 to ii: 10. Now$ if man needs this moral renovation of nature, he 
must be naturally sinfuL We find our Saviour Himself, Jno. iii : 5, 
6, stating this very argument. The context shows that Christ assigns 
the sixth verse as a ground or reason for the fifth, and not as an expla- 
nation of the difficulty suggested by Nicodemus in the fourth. More- 
over, the word barX means, by established Scripture usage, not the 
body, nor the natural human constitution considered merely as a nature, 
but man's nature as depraved morally. Compare Rom. vii j 14, 18 J 
viii's 4, 7, 8, 9; CoL ii: 18 ; Gal. v: 16-24; Gen. vi : % 

To this we may add, one of the meanings of circumcision and 
baptism was to symbolize this regeneration, (another, to represent 
cleansing from gilili by atonement.) Hence, sin is recognized in all to 
whom these sacraments are applied by divine command. And as both 
were given to infants, who had no intelligent acts of sin, it can only be 
explained by their having a sin of nature; 

5i Scripture proofs. — We have seen how the Bible asserts a uni* 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 225 

versal sinfulness in practice, and how it sustained us in tracing that 
universal sin up to its source in a sin of nature. We closes With a feW 
specimens of other texts, which expressly assert original sin. Job xiv : 
4; xv: 14^16; Prov. xxii : 15; Ps. li j 5 ; Eph. ii : 3. 

The evasions to which the deniers of Original Sin are forced to re- 
sort, to escape these categorical assertions, are too numerous and con- 
tradictory to be recited or answered here. Let these texts be carefully 
studied in their scope and connexion. 

One of these I will notice : It has been Objected ; that the innocences 
of children seems to be asserted in such places as Ps. cvi : 38 ; Jonah 
iv t H ; Jno. ix : 3 ; Rom. ix : lh I explain, that this is only a rela- 
tive innocence; The sacred writers here recognise their freedom from 
the guilt of all actual transgression, and their harmlessness towards 
their fellow men, during this helpless age. This, together with their 
engaging simplicity, dependence, and infantile graces, has made them 
types of innocence in all languages. And this is all the Scriptures 
means 

VIII. Imputation defined. — The Hebrew word hashab, and the 
G-reek, logidzomai, both mean primarily to think, then to deem or 
judge, then to impute or attribute. In this sense the former occurs in 
Ps* xxxii : 2, and the latter in Rom. iv: 6-8, as its translation. See 
also 2 Sam. xix : 19 ; 2 Cor. v : 19 ; Gal. iii : 6 ; Jas. ii : 23. Without 
going at this time into the vexed question, whether anything is ever 
said in Scripture to be imputed to any other than its own agent. I 
would define, that it is not Adam's sin which is imputed to us, but the 
guilt (obligation to punishment) of his first sin. This much misunder- 
stood doctrine does not teach that Adam's act was actually made ours. 
This consciousness repudiates* We know that we personally did not 
will it. Nor does it mean that we are to feel personally defiled and 
blameworthy, with the vileness and demerit of Adam's sin. For us to 
undertake to repent of it in this sense, would be as preposterous as for 
us to feel self-complacency for the excellence of Christ's righteousness 
imputed to us. Rut we are so associated with Adam in the legal con- 
sequences of the sin which closed his probation, and ours in his, that 
we are treated as he is, on account of his act. The grounds of this legal 
union we hold to be two : 1st the natural union with him as the root of 
all mankind ; 2nd the federal relation instituted in him, by God's cov- 5 
enant with him. Now, we do not say that the Scriptures anywhere use 
the particular phrase, the guilt of Adam's sin was imputed to usj but 
we claim that the truth is clearly implied in the transactions as they 
actually occurred, and is substantially taught in other parts of Scrip- 
ture. 

Imputation proved.— L If Adam came under the covenant of works 
as & public person, and acted there, not for himself alone, but for his 
posterity federally, this implies the imputation of the legal conse- 
quences of his act to them. The proof that Adam was a federal head, 
in all these acts, is clear as can be, from so compendious a narrative. 
See Gen. i : 22, 28 ; xxvi : 29 ; iii ; 15 to 19. In the dominion assigned 
man over the beasts, in the injunction to multiply, in the privilege of 
eating the fruits of the earth, in the hallowing of the Sabbath, God 
spoke seemingly only to the first pair ; but His words indisputably ap- 



226 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

plied as well to their posterity. So we infer, they are included in the 
threat of death for disobedience, and the implied promise of ii : 17* 
To see the force of this inference, remember that it is the established 
style of Genesis. See ix : 25 to 27 ; xv : 7 ; xvi : 12 ; xvii : 20 ; in each 
case the patriarch stands for himself and his posterity, in the meaning 
of the promise. But this is more manifest in Gen. iii: 15-19, where 
God proceeds to pass sentence according to the threat of the broken 
Covenant. The serpent is to be at war with the woman's seed. The 
ground is cursed for Adam's sin. Does not this curse affect his pos- 
terity, just as it did him 1 See Gen. v : 29. He is to eat his bread in 
the sweat of his face. Does not this pass over to his posterity 1 The 
woman has her peculiar punishment, shared equally by all her daugh- 
ters. And in the closing sentence, death to death, we all read the 
doom of our mortality. So plain is all this, that even Pelagians have 
allowed that God acted here judicially. But Adam's posterity is in- 
cluded in the judgment. No better description of imputation need be 
required. 

Imputation confirmed by Exferience. — 2. A presumption in fa- 
vour of this solution is raised by a number of facts in God's providence. 
He usually connects the people and their head, the children and pa- 
rents, in the consequences of the representative's conduct. Wherever 
there is such a political union, this follows. Nor is the consent of the 
persons represented always obtained, to justify the proceeding. In- 
stances may be found in the decalogue, Exod. xx : 5, the deliverance of 
Kahab's house by her faith, Josh, vi : 25 ; the destruction of Achan's by 
his sin, Josh, vii : 24, 25 ; of the posterity of ^.malek for the sins of 
their forefathers, 1 Sam. xv : 2. Of Saul's descendants for his breach 
of covenant with the Gibeonites, 2 Sam. xxi; of the house of Jero- 
boam, 1 Kings xiv : 9, 10; and of the generation of Jews cotemporary 
with Christ, Matt, xxiii : 35. So, nations are chastised with their ru- 
lers, children with their parents. It is not asserted that the case of 
Adam and his posterity is exactly similar ; but cases bearing some re- 
semblance to its principles show that it is not unreasonable ; and since 
God actually orders a multitude of such cases, and yet cannot do wrong, 
they cannot contain the natural injustice which has been charged upon 
Adam's case. 

3. Imputation implied in Man's state. — -The explanation presented 
by the doctrine of imputation is demanded by the mere facts of the 
case, as they are admitted by all except Pelagians and Socinians. 
Man's is a spiritually dead and a condemned race. See Eph. ii : 1-5, 
et passim. He is obviously under a curse for something, from the 
beginning of his life. Witness the native depravity of infants, and 
their inheritance of woe and death. Now either man was tried and fell 
in Adam, or he has been condemned without a trial. He is either under 
the curse, [as it rests on him at the beginning of his existence] for 
Adam's guilt, or for no guilt at all. Judge which is most honorable to 
God, a doctrine which, although a profound mystery, represents Him as 
giving man an equitable and most favourable probation in His federal 
head ; or that which makes God condemn him untried, and even before 
he exists. 

Not to be accounted for by mere law of reproduction. — Note 
here, that the Arminian view, in making man's fallen state by nature 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 227 

a mere result of the law: "Like must beget like," does not relieve the 
case. For who ordained that law? Who placed the human race under 
it, as to their spirits as well as their body ? Was not God able to endue 
a race with a law of generation which should be different in this par- 
ticular, or to continue the race of man by some other plan, as succes- 
sive creations? The very act of God, in ordaining this law for man 
whom He purposed to permit to fall, was virtually to ordain a federal 
connexion between Adam and his race, and to decide beforehand the 
virtual imputation of his guilt to them. For note : the consequences 
inherited by this law are the very ones which are the retributions of 
guilt, in all God's dealings of man. If then, the arrangement was not 
a righteous judicial one, based on the guilt of Adam, it was an arbi- 
trary one having no foundation in justice. 

Argument of Rom 5th and 1 Cor. 15th. — 4. But the great Bible 
argument for the imputation of Adam's sin, is the parallel drawn be- 
tween Adam and Christ, in 1 Cor. xv : 21, 22, 45-49, and Rom. v: 
12-19. The latter of these passages especially, has been the peculiar 
subject of exegetical tortures. See, for scheme of immediate imputa- 
tionists, Hodge on Rom. ; of moderate Calvinists, Baird, Elohim Rev. 
Chap. xiv. I shall not go over the expository arguments, for time for^ 
bids ; and they are rather the appropriate business of another depart- 
ment ; but shall content myself with stating the doctrinal results, 
which, as I conceive, are clearly established. In 1 Cor. xv : Adam and 
Christ are compared, as the first and the second Adam. In almost every 
thing they are contrasted ; the one earthy, the other heavenly ; the one 
source of death, the other of life ; yet they have something in common. 
What can this be, except their representative characters? In verse 
22, Adam is somehow connected with the death of his confederated 
body; and Christ is similarly (hosper . . . houto) connected with the 
life of his. But Christ redeems His people by the imputation to them 
of His righteousness. Must net Adam have ruined his, by the imputa- 
tion to them of his guilt ? 

Exposition of Rom. 5th. — In Rom. v: 12-19, it is agreed by all 
Calvinistic interpreters, that the thing illustrated is justification through 
faith, which is the great doctrine of the Epistle to Romans, denied at 
that time by Jews. The thing used for illustration is Adam's federal 
headship, and our sin and death in him, more generally admitted by 
Jews. The passage is founded on the idea of verse 14, that Adam is 
the figure (tupos) of Christ. And obviously, a comparison is begun in 
verse 12, which is suspended by parenthetic matter until verse 18, and 
there resumed and completed. The amount of this comparison is in- 
disputably this: that like as we fell in Adam, we are justified in Christ. 
Hence our general argument for imputation of Adam's sin ; because jus- 
tification is notoriously by imputation. 

2. It is asserted, verse 12, and proved, vs. 13, 14, that all men sinned 
and were condemned in Adam ; death, the established penalty of sin, 
passing upon them through his sin, as is proved, verse 14, by the death 
of those who had no actual transgression of their own. 

3. The very exceptions of vs. 15-17, where the points are stated in 
which the resemblance does not hold, show that Adam's sin is imputed. 
Our federal union with Adam, says the Apostle, resulted in condemna- 



228 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

tion and death with Christ in abounding grace. In the former case, 
one sin condemned all ; in the latter, one man's righteousness justifies 
all. The very exceptions show that men are condemned for Adam's sin. 
4. In vs. 18, 19, the comparison is resumed and completed ; and it is 
most emphatically stated that, as in Christ many are constituted right- 
eous, so in Adam many were constituted sinners. Scriptural usage of 
the phrase kathistenai dikaioi, and what is taught of the nature of 
our justification in Christ, together with the usage of the phrase dika- 
josin dzoes, verse 18, by which it is defined, prove that it is a forensio 
change which is implied. Then it follows that likewise our legal rela- 
tions were determined by Adam. This is imputation. 



LECTUBE XXVII. 



SYLLABUS. 
OEIGINAL SIN- (Concluded.) 

9. Refute the evasions of Pelagians, &c, from the argument for native de- 
pravity. 

Turrett., Loc. IX, Qu. 10. Edwards on Orig. Sin, Pt. I, ch, 1, § 9. 

10. Answer the objections to imputation a). From Scriptures as Deut. xxiv : 
16; Ezek. xviii: 20, b). From the absence of consent by us to the representa- 
tive union, c). From its supposed injustice, d). From (-rod's goodness. 

Turrett. Qu. 9. Edwards, Pt. IV. Knapp, Sect. LXXVI. 

11. Explain the theories of Mediate, and Immediate imputation, and show 
the correct view. 

Turrett. Qu. 9. Edwards, Pt. IV, ch. 3. Stapfer, Polemic Theol., Vol. I, 
ch. 3, § 856-7. Vol. IV, ch. 16, § 47-49. Breckinridge's Theol., Vol. 1, 
ch. 32, with Thornwell's Review, as above. Chalmer's Theo. Institutes. 
Princeton Review, 1830, p, 481-503. 

12. What the importance of the doctrine of original sin, from its connexions 
with the other doctrines of Redemption ? 

IX, We now group together the usual objections advanced by oppo- 
nents against our argument for native depravity. 

1. Objections. Adam sinned ; but was not originally corrupt. 
It is urged, if the sinning of men now proves they have native deprav- 
ity, Adam's sinning would prove that he had, since the generality of an 
effect does not alter its nature. I reply, the sophism is in veiling 
Adam's continued and habitual sinning after he fell, with the first sin, 
by which he fell. Did we only observe Adam's habit of sinning, with- 
out having known him from his origin, the natural and reasonable 
induction, so far as human reason could go, would be, that he was ori- 
ginally depraved. But the proof would be incomplete, because our 
observation did not trace this habit up, as we do in the case of infants 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 22& 

to the origin of his existence. It is revelation which informs us how 
Adam became a habitual sinner, not inference. But if Adam's first 
sin be compared with his descendant's perpetual sins, the difference is,, 
that an occasional effect requires an occasional cause ; but a constant 
effect requires a constant cause. 

2. Some Pelagins say, a self-determined, contingent will, is enough 
to account for all men's sinning. We reply : how comes a contingent 
force to produce always uniform effects ? If a die, when thrown, falls 
in various ways, its falling is contingent. But if it always falls the. 
same way, every gambler knows it is loaded. 

3. Example. May it account forii V — Pelagians offer the general 
power of an evil example, as the sufficient explanation why all men 
grow up sinners. Calvinists answer, a). How comes it that the example 
is universally evil ? This itself is the effect to be accounted for, 
b). If there were no innate tendency to evil, a bad example would 
usually repell and disgust the holy soul. c). All young immortals have 
not been subjected to an equally bad example; witness the godly fami- 
lies of Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, and the pious now, and above all,, 
the spotless example of Jesus Christ. If the power of example were 
the decisive cause, these good examples (not perfect, but,) approxima- 
ting thereto, would sometimes have produced an efficient upward ten- 
dency in some families. 

May influence of sense account for sin I — 4. Some say : Sense 
developes before reason ; and thus the child is betrayed under the power 
of appetite, before its moral faculties are strong enough to guide. I 
answer, mere animal appetite, without moral element, has no moral 
quality ; it is the heart which gives the evil element to bodily appetite,, 
not vice versa. But chiefly; we show that the result is uniform and 
certain : whence it is the efficient result of God's natural law ; which 
makes it more obnoxious to the charge of making God the author of 
sin, than the Calvinistic theory. 

X. Objections to Imputation. — Against the other element of origi- 
nal sin, the imputed guilt of Adam's first sin, it is also objected, that it 
cannot be true : for then God will appear to have acted with equal se- 
verity against poor helpless babes, who, on the Calvinist's theory, have 
no guilt except total depravity never yet expressed in a single overt act 
against His law ; and against Adam, the voluntary sinner : and Satan 
and his angels. We reply No. All infinites are not equal. Paschal 
and Sir Isaac Newton have shown that of two true infinites one may be 
infinitely larger than another. If the infant, Adam, and Satan, be all 
punished eternally, they will not be punished equally. Further ; has 
it been proved that any infants who die in infancy, (without overt sin,) 
are eternally lost 1 The question however is : are infants depraved by 
nature? And is this tendency of will to evil morally evil? Then God 
is entitled to punish it as it deserves. 

Objections from Scripture. — A scriptural objection is raised, from 
such passages as Deut. xxiv : 16. It is urged with great confidence, 
that here, the principle on which Calvinists represent God as acting, 
[God the pure and good Father in Heaven,] is seen to be so utterly 
wicked, that imperfect human magistrates are forbidden to practise on 
it. I reply; it is by no means true that an act would be wicked in 



230 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

{rod, beeause it would be wicked in man. E. G. Man may not kill, God 
righteonsly kills millions every year. But second : the object of civil 
government is very different from that of God's government. The civil 
Magistrate does not punish sin in order to requite absolutely its ill- 
desert. (This is the function of God alone,) but to preserve the public 
order and well-being, by making an example of criminals. Now, of that 
.element of guilt against society, the children of the murderer or thief are 
clear ; for the magistrate to shed their blood for this, would be to shed 
innocent blood : i. e. innocent as to that element of guilt which it is the 
civil magistrate's business to punish. Here, let it be noted, the punish- 
ment of Achan's, Saul's, &c, children, for their fathers, was the act of 
God, not the Magistrate. The cases were exceptional. 

Objection from Ezek. xviii : 1-23 answered.. — Again : it is urged 
with much clamour, t.hat in Ezek. xviii : 1-23, God expressly repudiates 
the scheme of imputation of father's sins to their posterity, for Himself > 
as well as for magistrates ; and declares this as the great law of His king~ 
dom : "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." We reply: He does not 
mean to disclaim the imputation of Adam's sin to the human race. For 
first ; He does not mean here, to disclaim all principles of imputation in 
His Povidence even as to parents and posterity subsequent to Adam. If 
you force this sense on His words, all you get by it is an irreconcilable 
collision between this passage and Exod. xx : 5, and obvious facts in His 
providence. Second, if it were true universally of human parents sub- 
sequent to Adam, it would not follow as to Adam's first sin. For there 
is a clear distinction between that act of Adam, and all the sins of other 
parents. He alone was a federal head in a Covenant of works. The 
moment he fell, by that act, the race fell in him, and its apostasy was 
effected ; the thing was done ; and could not be done over. From that 
hour, a Covenant of works became inapplicable to man, and neither pa- 
rents nor children, for themselves, nor for each other, have had any pro- 
bation under it. So that the case is widely different, between Adam in 
his first sin, and all other parents in their sin. Third ; the Covenant in 
which this whole passage has reference was, not the old Covenant of 
works, whose probation was forever past, but the political, theocatic 
-Covenant between God and Israel. Israel, as a commonwealth, was 
,now suffering under providential penalties, for the breach of that politi- 
cal covenant exactly according to the terms of the threatenings. (See 
Deut. 28.) But although that was indisputable, the banished Jews still 
consoled their pride by saying, that it was their fathers' breach of the 
national Covenant for which they were suffering. In this plea God 
meets them ■ and tells them it was false ; for the terms of the theocracy 
were such, that the covenant breaking of the father would never be 
visited on the Son who thoroughly disapproved of it, and acted in the 
opposite way. How far is this, from touching the subject of Original 
Sin? But last: we might grant that the passage did refer to original 
sin ; and still refute the objector thus, God says the son who truly dis- 
approves of and reverses his Fathers' practices, shall live. Show us 
now a child of Adam who fulfills this condition, in his own strength, 
and we will allow that the guilt of Adam's sin has not affected him. 

Adam's Representation a humane arrangement. — In defending 
the federal relationship instituted between Adam and his posterity 
against the charge of cruelty, let it be distinctly understood, that we do 



OF LECTURES IK THEOLOGY. 231 

not aim to justify the equity of the arrangement merely by the plea 
that it was a benevolent one, and calculated to promote the creature's 
advantage. For if it were an arrangement intrinsically unrighteous, it 
would be no sufficient answer to say, 'that it was politic and kindly. 
God does not "do evil, that good may come ;" nor hold that "the end 
sanctifies the means." But still, we claim that, as the separate charge 
of cruelty, or harshness, is urged against this federal arrangement, we 
can triumphantly meet it, and show that the arrangement was eminent- 
ly benevolent ; thus reconciling it to the divine attribute of goodness so 
far as that is concerned in it. And further : while the benevolence of 
an arrangement may not be a sufficient justification of its righteousness, 
yet it evidently helps to palliate the charge of injustice, and to raise a 
presumption in favor of the equity of the proceeding. If there were 
injustice in such a transaction, one element of it must be that it was 
mischievous to the happiness of the parties. 

Its benevolence proved by Comparison.— This federal relation 
then, was consistent with God's goodness. Let the student remember 
what was established concerning the natural rights and relations of a 
holy creature towards his Creator. The former could never earn a 
claim, by natural justice, to any more than this: to be well treated to 
the extent of his natural well-being merely, as long as he behaved him- 
self perfectly, or until God should see fit to annihilate him. If God 
condescended to any fuller communications of happiness, or to give any 
promise of eternal life, it must be by an act of free grace. And the 
covenant of works was such an act of grace. Now, a race of men being 
■created, holy and happy, there were, as far as the human mind can im- 
agine, but four plans possible for them. One was, to be left under their 
natural relation to God forever. The second was, to have the gracious 
offer of a covenant of works, under which each one should stand for 
himself, and a successful probation of some limited period, (suppose 70 
years,) be kindly accepted by God for his justification, and adoption into 
eternal life. The third was, for God to enter into such a covenant of 
works, for a limited period, with the head of the race federally, for 
himself and his race, so that if he stood the limited probation, justifica- 
tion and adoption should be graciously bestowed on him, and in him, on 
all the race ; and if he failed, all should be condemned in him. The 
third was the plan actually chosen : Let us compare them, and see if it 
is not far the most benevolent of the three. 

The first plan, I assert, would have resulted, sooner or later, in the sin 
and fall of every member of the race, and that with a moral certainty. 
(This may be the reason that God has condescended to a Covenant with 
each order of rational creatures after creating them.) For creatures, no 
matter how holy, are finite, in all their faculties and habitudes. But, 
in an existence under law, i. e. under duty, requiring perpetual and per- 
fect obedience, and protracted to immortality, the number and variety 
of exigencies or moral trials, would become infinite ; and therefore the 
chance of error, in the passage of a finite holiness through them, would 
become ultimately a most violent probability, mounting nearer and 
nearer to a moral certainty. Whenever sin occurred, the mere natural 
relation of the soul to God would require Him to avenge it. T ou s, one 
after another would stumble, till ultimately all were lost. This would 
ibe the least benevolent plan. 



232 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

But suppose each man allowed the privilege of a Covenant of works, 
for some limited time, to win the grace of adoption unto life by a per- 
fect obedience for, say, 70 years, and beginning his probation with a per- 
fectly innocent nature. How would that work 1 ? Why; have we not 
here, the very state of the case which Socinians and Pelagians say, actu- 
ally prevails? Let man's experience then, even as interpreted by these 
heretics, give the answer how it works. Do they not admit that, by 
virtue of evil example, nearly all fall ? Can they deny that the earth is 
full of misery and wickedness; and that none remain absolutely inno- 
cent ? If then, our present state were consistently interpreted as a pro- 
bation under a Covenant of works, in which any sin forfeits the prize ; 
if Pelagians would be consistent, and not introduce the preposterous 
idea of pardon under such a plan, where it has no business ; even they 
would be compelled to admit that this second scheme does actually result 
in a total failure. Under it, all are destroyed. It too then, has as little 
beneficence as the first. This, I grant, is an argumentum ad hominem : 
but it is a just one. But we might leave the Pelagian's premises, and 
still reason, that the second scheme would only result in death. The 
actual failure of the first man's probation settles the question as to him* 
The next would have had the same chances of fall, aggravated by the 
evil example and enticements of the first ; and pretty soon, the current 
of evil would have become so general, that all would go with it. 

Advantages of Covenant of Works, with a Bepresentative.-^- 
Let us come to the third plan. Is it said, that practically, all have 
died under that also, so that it is just on a par with the other two? I 
answer, no ; because the probabilities of a favourable issue were as 
great as could well be imagined, compatibly with leaving the creature 
mutable at all. For, instead of having a risque repeated millions of 
times, under circumstances increasingly untoward, only one risque was 
permitted. And this was under the most favorable possible conditions. 
The probationer had no human bad company : he was in the maturity 
of his powers and knowledge, whereas his posterity would have had to 
begin their trial in their inexperienced boyhood. He had the noblest 
motives to stand, imaginable. Had the probation resulted favourably, 
so that we had all entered existence assured against sin and misery, and 
the adopted heirs of eternal life, how would we have magnified the 
goodness of God in the dispensation ! The grace bestowed through the 
first Adam, would have been only second in its glory, to that we now 
adore in the second ! Now, the failure was not God's fault ;■ His good- 
ness is just the same in the plan, as though it had eventuated well. It 
is no objection to say, that God foreknew, all the while, how unfortu- 
nately it would eventuate, and even determined to permit it. For this 
objection is no other than the one against the permission of evil : which 
no one can solve. It is but to restate the question : Why did not God 
just communicate Himself at once to every reasonable creature, so as 
to absolutely confirm His will against sin, without proposing any cove- 
nant, or probation at all? There is no answer, but Matt, xi; 26* 
This plan, the fourth and only other, being excluded, as stubborn fact 
proves it was, the federal arrangement made with Adam for his poster- 
ity, was the most liberal one. 

Objection against justice of imputation. — But the grand objec- 
tion of all Pelagians and skeptics, is still repeated: How can it be 



OF LECTURES IN" THEOLOGY. 233 

justice, for me, who gave no consent to the federal arrangement, forme, 
who was not present when Adam sinned, and took no share iu it, save in 
a sense purely fictitious and imaginary, to he go terribly punished for 
another man's deed. This is notliing else than the intrinsic injustice of 
punishing an innocent man for the fault of the guilty. As well might 
God haye gotten up a legal fiction of a federal relation betweenGabriel 
and Satan, and when the latter sinued, dragged Gabriel down, innocent, 
and even ignorant of any crime, to hell. Against such a plau, the 
moral instincts of man rebel. It is simply impossible that they should 
accept it as righteous. 

The several answers 1. The Wesleyan, is inadequate.— I 
have thus stated this objection in its lull f wee. So far as [ am aware, 
there have been five several expedients proposed for meeting it. 1. 
The Wesleyan says : the injustice would appear, if it were not remedied 
in the second Adam, in whom the imputation of Adam's guilt and ori- 
ginal sin are so far repaired, as to give common sufficient grace to every 
child of Adam. So that the two dispensations ought to be viewed 
together; and what is harsh in one will be compensated in the other. 
This is inadmissible for many reasons chiefly because there is no 
common sufficient grace : and because if this solution be adopted, then 
the gospel will be of debt, and not of grace. 

2. President Edwards also inadequate. — We find President Ed- 
Wards endeavoring to evade the objection, by asserting that our federal 
oneness with Adam is no more arbitrary, in that it was constituted by 
God's fiat, than our own personal identity; for, that also is constituted 
.only by God's institution. If it be asked why is it just that I should 
be punished to-day, for a sin committed last year, our moral instincts 
answer : Because I am the same person who sinned. But the Pelagian 
objection urges that we are not one with Adam in any real sense, and 
therefore cannot be justly made guilty for Adam's sin. But, says Ed- 
wards: " What is personal identity : and is it any less arbitrary than 
our federal identity with Adam 1" He answers : "in no wise. Because 
our existence is dependent and successive. Its sustentation is a per- 
petual recreation. Its succession is a series of moments, of which one 
moment's existence does not cause or produce a succeeding moment's, 
not being coexistent with it, as cause and effect must always be. Hence, 
our continued identity is nothing else than a result of the will of God, 
sovereignly ordaining to restore our existence out of nihil, by a per- 
petual recreation, at the beginning of each new moment, and to cause 
in us a consciousness which seems to give sameness." I will venture 
the opinion that no man, not Edwards himself, ever satisfied himself, 
by this argument, that his being had not a true, intrinsic continuity, 
and a real necessary identity in itself. And it may usually be con- 
cluded that when any scientific conclusion conflicts thus with universal 
common sense, it is sophistical. In this case, a more correct Meta- 
physics has justified common sense Our belief in our own identity is 
not derived from our remembered consciousness, but implied in it. 
Belief in identity is an a priori, and necessary conception. If it be not 
accepted as valid, there is no valid law of thought at all. When I 
speak of the I, a true and intrinsic continuity of being is necessarily 
implied. Nor is it true that because the moments of successive time 
are not connected, therefore the existence which we necessarily, con- 



234 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

eeive of as flowing on in time, is disconnected in its momenta. We 
have seen that the notion of a perpetual recreation in the providential 
support of dependent being is improved. Hence we repudiate this Ed- 
wardean speculation as worthless, and contradicted by our own intui- 
tions. 

Dr. S. J. Baird's unsound, — 3. Another attempt is made to estab- 
lish a real identity of Adam's posterity with him, so as to lay a seem- 
ing basis for the imputation/by a class of theologians represented by 
Dr. S. J. Baird's " Elohim Revealed," who claim St. Augustine, as of 
their party. They say, we are made guilty of Adam's sin, because "we 
sinned in him aud fell With him," not merely in a putative and federal 
sense, but really and truly. Thus we are involved in a true and proper 
responsibility for the sin of Adam, because we were actually in him 
seminally, as our root. They teach that we become sinners in him, be- 
cause the nature sinned in him, and became guilty in him-, as well as 
depraved ; and this nature we have. Our nature they define to be that 
aggregate of forces, or attributes which constitute the human raoe what 
it is ; and this, they hold, is not an abstraction when regarded distinctly 
from all individual men, but an objective reality, not indeed a sub- 
stance, yet an entity. This nature, which thus sinned, and became 
guilty and depraved in Adam's act, is transferred as a real germ, to 
every human being from him ; and hence depravity and guilt go along. 
This theory, while not exactly mediaeval Realism, is certainly some- 
thing near akin to it ; and the objections are of the same kind. That 
the phrase, human nature, expresses anything more than a complex 
conception of our thought, when abstracted from any one and every one 
human person, is untrue. This nature, they say, is the aggregate of all 
the forces which characterize man as man. But have those forces, each 
one, separate existence, as abstracted from all the individual men whom 
they characterize? Has the attribute of visibility, e.g. separate exist- 
ence from each and every visible beiug? Obviously not. How then 
can the aggregate of these attributes? Again : we cannot attach the 
idea of sin, morality, responsibility, and guilt to anything but a per- 
sonal being. If the nature, along with which the depravity and respon- 
sibility are transmitted, has not personality, the theory does not help 
us at all. But if you give it personality, have you not gotten back to 
the common soul of Averroes, the half-way house of Pantheism? Third ; 
if the imputation of Adam's guilt is grounded solely on the fact that 
the nature we bear sinned and was corrupted in him, must it not follow 
that Christ's human nature is also corrupt, inasmuch as it was made 
guilty? And indeed is not our obeying and atoning in him, through 
the community of the nature that obeyed and atoned, precisely as real 
and intrinsic, as our sinning and corrupting ourselves in Adam ? For 
these reasons, we must reject this explanation as untrue, if anything 
more be meant by it,:than a strong way of stating the truth, that impu- 
tation is partly grounded on the fact Adam was the natural head of 
the race. 

XI. Mediate Imputation. — The fourth solution attempted for the 
great objection, brings, us to the 11th question : the scheme of mediate 
imputation. The author and history of this are sufficiently stated by 
Turretin. Placseus said that the imputation of Adam's sin was only 
mediate, and consequent* upon our participation in total native deprav- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 235 

hy, which we derive by the great law, that like begets like. We, be- 
ing thus depraved by nature, and,, so to speak, endorsing his sin, by 
exhibiting the same spirit and committing similar acts, it is just in God 
to implicate us in the same punishments. To this view Turretin, with 
the stricter Calvinists, objects, that it is but mere Arminianism dis- 
guised ; and that it really leaves no imputation of Adam's guilt at all. 
The latter charge has a certain amount of justice in it? for the scheme 
makes each man"s own personal sin, viz., his native sin, the only vir- 
tual cause of his punishment. But it is unjust to say that it is no bet* 
ter than Arminianism ; for it doe* not appear that Placseus held concu- 
piscence to be innocent in its rise, nor that he disputed in the least the 
native bondage of the will to sin. The more valid objections to it are, 
1st, that, like the Arminian, it offers the fact that God should have ex* 
tended the law, " like begets like," to man's moral nature as an expla* 
nation of the fact. Natural laws are of God's sovereign institution, 
and it is His providence which sustains and regulates them. His or- 
daining such a natural law for the posterity of falleu Adam, would have 
been virtually to decide their fate by the same judicial act which de- 
cided his; and the question recurs, on what judicial basis did the sen- 
tence as to them rest? 2dk Placaous' scheme is false to the facts of 
the case, in that it speaks as though God conceived of Adam's posterity 
as having an antecedent depraved existence, before they passed under 
condemnation; whereas the Scripture shows that they are born con- 
demned* 

Immediate Imputation, — In opposition to this scheme, Turrettiu 
states the view of immediate imputation, which has since been defined 
and asserted in its most rigid sharpness by the Princeton schook It 
boldly repudiates every sense in which we really or actually sinned in 
Adam-, and admits no other than merely the representative sense of a 
positive covenant. It says that the guilt of Adam's first sin > which 
was personally nobody's but Adam's owu, is sovereignly imputed to his 
posterity. Depravity of nature is a part of the penalty of death, due to 
Adam's sin, and is visited on Adam's children purely as the penal con- 
sequence of the putative guilt they bear. For sin may be the punish- 
ment 'of sin. Very true, atter depravity of nature thus becomes per- 
sonally theirs^ it also brings an addition of personal guilt, for which 
they are thenceforward punished, as well as for actual transgressions. 
The grounds for this statement are chiefly these two-: 1, That Rom. v 
12-20 asserts an exact parallel between our federal relation to Adam 
and to Christ-, so that as the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us, 
conceived as personally unrighteous, goes before procuring our justifi- 
cation, and then all sanctifying grace is bestowed working personal 
sanctification, as purchased by Christ's righteousness for us, so we must 
conceive Adam's guilt imputed to us, we being conceived as in the first 
instance personally guiltless., but for that guilt ; and then depravity 
given us, working personal sin and guilt, as the mischievous purchase 
of Adam's federal act for us* And, as the parallel must be exact, if 
this view of original sin be rejected, then the view of justification must 
be modified " to suit ; " making it consist first in an infusion of perso- 
nal righteousness in the believer, and then the consequent accounting to 
us of Christ's righteousness. But that is precisely the Romish justifi- 
cation. 2d. Unless the justice and reasonableness of the imputation of 



236 ^YILABUS AND ffOTES 

Adam's sin to us be admitted, we having, so far, no personal guilt, tfOf' 
actual personal agency in his sin ; the' reasonableness of the imputation 
of Christ's righteousness cannot be defended, and justification is ren- 
dered impossible. 

This TheorI Disregards the Objection. — As to the great objec- 
tion against our involuntary federal connexion with Adam", these dn 
vines unscrupulously impinge against it, and demand that the moral 
intuition on which it claims to be founded, be simply trampled down. 
Whether this is discreet, or true, or just 5 the student can easily judge" 
for himself.- Surely it is not wise so to represent God's truth, so to 
sharpen and exaggerate its angles, at the demand of an erroneous dia- 
lectics or overstrained ex-egesis, as to causelessly array against it the 
ineradicable intuitions of man's soul ! Surely there are mysteries 
enough in this awful fact of original sin, to distress aud awe the sensi- 
tive mind, without seeking gratuitously to exasperate them. And he 
who insists that the price men shall pay for admitting the orthodox the- 
ology is- the surrender of their common sense, as they suppose, is prac- 
tically propagating unbelief, If we are to abdicate our intuitive be- 
liefs, we can no longer reason, nor believe anything propefly. Wo 
must indeed, as We ao, demand the unconditional submission of carndl 
feason, and we insist on facts which impinge against it; but not sancti 
fied reason. One object of religion is to purify, rectify, iind then em- 
ploy this reason as necessary handmaid. 

Its special reasons tnSsouND.— The special reasons, on which that 
which is peculiar in this theory rests, are sophistical. The reasonable- 
ness of an imputation of Christ's merits to us, does not depend on the' 
reasonableness of such an imputation Of Adam's 1 sin to tfs as they de- 
scribe. The simple proof is, (it is amazing it should be overlooked ;) 
the latter was an act of justice, of law ; the former,? of mercy. Surely,- 
it does not follow, that because a gratuitous act of goodness may be 
reasonable and right,- therefore a gratuitous act of severity is equally 
so ! J$for is it of any avail to say, Christ was not personally an agent in 
onv sins, yet the guilt of them was accounted to Him;' for this also was 
a part of the plan of mercy; and Ite gave liis voluntary consent before- 
hand. As to the Urst reason^ drawn from Paul's parallel between Adam 
asd Christ, it is not proved that the Apostle meant the parallel to be 
technically exact in every point. Such is rarely the case with illus- 
trations ; if they have analogy enough to explain, the one the other, it 
is enough. Does not Paul himself stop, in the midst of his illustration, 
even leaving his sentence suspended, to name two important respects in' 
which the parallel was not exact? And is there not an inevitable dif- 
ference,- as he himself intimates? in the fact that the one federal ar- 
rangement was a transaction of ldi6, and the other of grace f It was- 
enough for his purpose to teach, what 1 strictly hold^that the first and 
second Adam were federal heads ;' and that as- we fell in one, we are 
jestored in the otfe'er. But, it is urged that, if immediate imputation 1 
is rejected, we are necessarily betrayed into the Popish doetrine of jus- 
tification which makes inherent personal righteousness precede, and im- 
puted follow. Let us see whether this charge may not be at least as 
plausibly retorted. If we are personally guiMess and sinless, till Ad-* 
am's guilt is accounted to us, and then (in the order of thought)) we re-- 
ceive depravity as the punishment of imputed guilt, a rigid parallelism 



Otf L^dTURBS m fliEdLOC^. 237 

(such as thei other view demands,) must lead to this view of justification 
that we are personally unholv and contrasted in spiritual state with 
our federal Head, Christ, at the time of our justification! and after- 
Wards, in the order of caUsasion, we begin to partake of His spiritual 
life and holiness, as a consequence of His imputed merit. But is that 
the Reformed doctrine of justification 1 Nay verily. I pray you dis- 
tinguish 2 As to a personal merit or righteousness procuring our accep- 
tance U)ith God, we have none at all, at the time of our justification,- 
nor ever after. But as to actual spiritual condition, we are not spirit' 
ually dead and depraved totally at the moment of justification. The" 
order of sequence (not that we suppose an appreciable interval of time) 
is thus fixed by all the Beformed divines, so far as I know* 1. H&g'eri' 
eration, in which we begin to share the spiritual life of our head. %. 
Saving faith acted by the soul, (with repentance implicitly in it.) 3. 
Mystical union to Christ constituted ; Which divides into a.) Legal unions 
b.) Spiritual unions So that when the soul is justified in the second 
Adam, it is already spiritually alive in him. We see then, that Prince- 
ton will hate to relinquish the pretense of an exact parallel between 
our relation to the first and second Adam \ or she is in danger of being 
driven by it into the abhorred result of mediate imputation. Do / then 
adopt the latter t No < consistency would drive Princeton to it, but not 
me ; for I have never asserted that exact parallel. It is not to be ex- 
pected^ when we remember that, as to our relation to the second Adam,- 
we each one have our own, personal, previous.) existence, as depraved 
and guilty beings before we are brought into actual federal union with 
him. But as to the first Adam, we had no separate personal existence' 
at all, till we (lame into existence actually and federally united to him; 

ImMeDiaTe Imputation Nt»T true To facTs.— ; This leads me to ob* 
ject, last, that this view of immediate imputation is false, in that it 
represents man as having a separate, indepraved,- personal existence, for 
an instant at least, until from innocent it is turned into depraved, as a 
penal consequence of Adam's guilt imputed. Whereas, in fact, he' 
Sever has any existence at ail, except a depraved existence. As he 
enters being condemned, so he entets it depraved.- This over-re'finement 
thus leads to positive inaccuracy, as most of man's attempts to be "wise' 
above that which is written." It sins in a similar way, with the erro- 
neous scheme of Placasus, in the contrasted direction. 

Neither Scheme adopted. ScrIptuRaL Statement Of Doctrine. 
If you ask me then, which of the two schemes /hold ; I answer ; neither \ 
I say of them, just as of the ill-starved distinction of the Supra and 
Infra Lapsarian, that it is a distinction Which ought never to have been 
drawn either way i an attempt to assign an order of sequence to ele- 
ments which God presents to us always united and as one cotCmpora- 
neous wholes I would prefer to represent the doctrine of Original Sin 
thus: (and correctly stated, it is rather a great.; obvious fact than a 
hypothesis); That God, in His sovereign wisdom, righteousness, and 
goodness, was pleased to ordain such a natural and federal Union be- 
tween Adam and his posterity, making him their representative, that 
his probation should evetituate for them precisely as it did for him. 
That is ; they are so connected with him, legally and naturally, that, 
into whatever moral condition, and into whatever legal status, Adam 
should bring himself by bis act$ in that moral, and in that legal eondi* 



23S SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

tibia, all his posterity should be born. And as in Adam, the change" of 4 
condition* in both senses, was one whole connected change t so is the sin 
in his posterity. As in Adam, the first influx of depravity of heart was 
not visited on him after his sinful act merely, and as a penal conse- 
quence of it, but accompanied and prompted the act ; so in Adam's pos* 
terity, the depravity of heart is as original as the guilt. In God's eyes 
they are" condemned with their first father, as depraved with him, and 
they are given over to their depravity as guilty with him. And this, 
(in spite of Princeton,) is the view given by the current of Calvinistic 
divines* beginning with Calvin himself— down to Dr. Breckinridge; If 
a part of Edward's language could be taken, (p. 545, Mote* last para- 
graph,) we might also include him in this list; but he has confused and 
marred his excellent discussion by speaking, in soma places as Placseus^ 
and by his gronndless denial of an intrinsic mental identity. 

Rational Objection now Irrelevant.—" 'Now, wh<m we approach 
the rational difliculties of the doctrine, with this view of it, we find that 
they are, not indeed fully explained ; (for the mystery of God's dealing 
in this thing, no mortal can dissipate ; and least of all Pelagians and Ra* 
tionalists,) but they are obviated* The charge of intrinsic injustice is 
removed ; for the case is now so unique* so totally without parallel or 
illustration, that it is obviously lifted above the jurisdiction of human 
reason. Hence reason cannot convict the transaction of injustice, be- 
cause she cannot comprehend it, nor measure it by any experimental 
standard. You will notice that all the illustrations of the supposed 
injustice of our condemnation in Adam, are cases in which the moral 
agent has his own* personal, separate, responsible existence* before the 
imputation takes place, and that an innocent existence so far as his per- 
sonal agency went. Now such an imputation, made without his consent, 
would be unjust. But stick is not oiir case in Adam. We never had 
any previous* separate, innocent personal existence of our own, consti- 
tuting a legal title to immunity ; which title would be violated by God's 
Condemning us in Adam. We had no existence at all ; and so, no title; 
For we do not represent God as visiting guilt and then depravity as its 
penalty, on us conceived as d priori personally innocent. The Whole 
Case is this : that God, in making Adam " the root of all mankind,'* 
should have ordained the status in which our existence was to begin, to 
be in all points determined by Adam's status as settled for him, by his 
voluntary act; It is a mighty mystery ; it cannot be explained ; but 
neither can it be convicted of any injustice. Why did God permit Sin 
in His Universe ? 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 239 

LECTUEE XXYIIL 



SYLLABUS, 
THE LAW. 

1. In what senses is the word Law used in the Bible f 
See Concordances and Lexicons. 

2. Is the Law of God written on the natural Conscience ? What the authori- 
ty of this natural law ? Is the decalogue of moral, or of positive obligation ? 

Turrettin, Loc. XI, qu. I, 2. Dick, Lee. 102. 

3. If the Covenant of Works is now inapplicable for us, what uses has the law 
in a plan o*' Salvation bv Grace ? 

Turrett,, qu. 22, "23. Calvin, Bk. II, ch. vii. Ridgeley, qu. 94 to 97. 

4. Recite the origin of the Decalogue. How is it divided ? What are the 
principles upon which it is to be interpreted ? 

Calvin, Bk. II, ch. viii. Turrett., qu. 5 and 6. Dick, Lect. 102, 103. Ridge- 
ley, qu. 99. 

5. Is tbe Decalogue a perfect rule of life ? Did the Saviour improve upon or 
abrogate any part of it ? 

Turrett., qu. 3 and 4. Dick, as above. On the whole, Green's Lect, on 
Shorter Catechism, 34 to 36. 

I. Definitions, — The word 'Law,' (torah, nomos,) is employed in 
the Scripture with a certain latitude of meaning, but always carrying 
the force of meaning contained in the general idea of a regulative 'prin- 
ciple. First, it sometimes expresses the whole of Revelation, as in P.". 
i ; 2. Second, the whole Old Testament, as in Jno, x : 84. Third, 
frequently the Pentateuch, as in Luke xxiv : 44. Fourth, the precep- 
tive moral law (Prov. xxviii : 4 ; Rom, ii • 14. Fifth, the ceremonial 
code, as in Hebr. x: 1. Sixth, the decalogue, Matt, xxii : 36-40. 
Seventh, a ruling power in our nature, as in Rom, vii : 23. Eighth, 
the covenant of works, Rom. vi : 14. By the Law in the following dis- 
cussions, we intend the preceptive moral law, as epitomized in the dec- 
alogue. 

II. Moral Distinction Intrinsic —The student will be prepared to 
expect my answer to the second point, from what has been taught of 
the eternity of moral distinctions. These are intrinsic in that class of 
acts They are not instituted solely by the positive will of God, but are 
enjoined by that will because His infinite mind saw them to be intrinsic 
and eternal. In a word : Duties are not obligatory and right solely 
because God has commanded them; but He has commanded them be- 
cause they are right. Hence, we confidently expect to find the natural 
powers of reason and conscience in man impressed with the moral dis- 
tinction, and pronouncing it intuitively. 

a.) From the faot that the Scriptures represent God Himself, at least 
in one particular, as bound by this distinction of right and wrong, 
'• God cannot lie ; " that is, the eternal perfections of His own mind so 
regulate His own volitions that His will certainly, yet freely, refuses 
all error. See also 2 Tim. ii : 13. 

b.) The very nature of a creature implies rightful subjection to a 
Creator ; its denial would be utter contradiction. Thus the law of our 
reason teaches us, that the creature existing, these moral relations can- 
not but exist, whether God has published them in positive precepts, or 
not. - • . . ;■; 



240 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

c.) If these moral distinctions owed their origin solely to God's pos. 
itive will, no distinction could be drawn between m,oral and positive 
precepts. The prohibition, "Thou shalt not bear false witness," would 
be exactly like this: "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's 
milk." .but there is a distinction between the two classes, recognized 
by God and our reason. 'Judgment, mercy, and truth,' are pronounced 
' weightier matters of the law,' compared with tithing mint, annise,and 
cummin. 

d.) If there were no cause, save God's mere will, why moral distinc- 
tions were drawn as they are, He might have made treachery a virtue, 
and truth a crime, &c. Against this every moral intuition revolts. 
Why might not God have done thus? The only answer is, that His 
own unchangeable moral perfections made it impossible. Just so; it is 
admitted that the basis of the moral distinction is a priori to all voli- 
tion of God; which is substantially my proposition. And last, and 
most conclusively : If God's mere positive volition made an act of the 
creature morally right, then of course God must be morally right 
in entertaining that volition. But the moral character of volitions de- 
pends wholly on that of the principles which prompt them. So that, 
we see, if there were no moral distinction a priori to God's mere will, 
God could have no moral character in any acts of His will. 

Consequences,-— The moral distinction being then intrinsic and eter- 
nal, it follows that the intuition and feeling of its obligation must bo 
one of the natural endowments of the rational creature made in God's 
image. This obligation must be recognized by man's conscience as nat- 
ural and moral, and not merely positive, To this agree the Scriptures, 
Horn, i: 19-21, ii : 14, 15; Acts xiv : 17. And these declarations are 
confirmed by the consensus populi upon the existence of a moral obliga- 
tion, and its main outlines, by a multitude of the faots of our con- 
sciousness, by the admissions of Pagans. But here, the distinction so 
clearly made between moral principia and conclusiones, must be noted. 
In some cases of moral obligation, the perception and verdict of con- 
science are immediate. In other cases, they are deductive. Should 
a creature obey its Creator ? To this the sane reason answers intuit 
tively, Yes. Should the borrower pay any hire for the use of money? 
To this the mind can only answer deductively; certain premises must 
be known to the understanding, from which the moral answer must be 
by deduction drawn. 

If the moral distinction is thus eternal in acts, unchangeable in God, 
and natural in man, the preceptive law reoeives a new dignity, immu- 
tability, and sacredness. Then it follows, also, that the natural con- 
science is God's viceregent in man ; and its diotates must be obeyed, or 
guilt arises. But when remember that the light in man's conscience 
is imperfect, we see that it is not true that this faculty is a sufficient 
rule of duty. That rule is found in God's precepts alone. The seem- 
ing paradox arising out of the dictate of an ill-informed conscience has 
been already considered. 

III. Uses of Law under Covenant of Grace — The Law Immuta- 
ble. — It has been asked, if the Law can no longer be a covenant of 
life to fallen sinners, what place and use can it properly have in a plan 
of salvation by grace ? You are aware that there have been, in the 
Church, erroists called Antinomians, who, in fact, sought to exclude 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 225 

the law from their system, asserting that since it is no longer a term of 
life, since it has been fully satisfied both in its preceptive and penal 
demands by the believer's divine Substitute, it can have no binding 
force upon, and no application to him. But the view I have given of 
the Law, as the necessary and unchanging expression of God's recti- 
tude, shows that its authority over moral creatures is unavoidable. If 
God reveals Himself to them, He cannot but reveal Himself as He is. 
Just these precepts are the inevitable expression of a will guided by 
immutable perfections. It is therefore simply impossible that any dis- 
pensation, of whatever mercy or grace, could have the effect of abro- 
gating righteous obligation over God's saints. God's mercy through a 
Redeemer satisfying justice, may lift off the curse of the law for trans- 
gression ; but it is impossible that it should abrogate rightful authority. 
The Law then must remain, under every dispensation, the authoritative 
declaration of God's character. 

The Law convicts of our need of Christ, &c. — A second essential 
use of the Law under the New Covenant, is that which Gal. iii : 24 
states: " The Law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ." By 
showing us our penal debt, and the high terms of the Covenant of 
works, now impossible for the sinner to fulfil, it prepares his soul to 
submit to the righteousness of the Redeemer. A third, and equally 
essential use appears to the believer, after his adoption. He is 
"ehosen in Christ that he should be holy" : "redeemed from all iniqui- 
ty to be Christ's peculiar people, zealous of good works." This great 
end, the believer's sanctification, can only be attained in practice, by 
giving him a holy rule of conduct. Such a rule is the Law. It is to' 
be as assiduously observed, as the guide to that holiness which is the 
fruit of adoption, as though its observance could earn adoption. A 
fourth important purpose of the publication of the Law in the Church, 
appears in this : that its precepts restrain the aboundings of sin. They 
partially instruct the consciences even of the unrenewed. They guide 
secular laws, and thus lay a foundation for a wholesome civil society. 
And last: the publication of the Law is preparatory for that use which 
God will make of it in the Judgment Day, for the conviction of His 
enemies. He is now, in every such message, preparing to close the 
mouths of the disobedient in that day. 

For these reasons, the preaching and expounding of the Law is to be 
kept up diligently, in every gospel Church. 

IV. Decalogue God's Summary of Duty. — The whole decalogue is 
found written out in full, in two plaees of the Bible ; beside a number 
of other places, where one or more of the precepts is cited. These 
places are Exodus xx : 2 to 17, and Deut. v : 6 to 21. It is the doc- 
trine of Catechism, that these " Ten Words" were intended to be a 
summary of man's whole duty. Why, it may be asked, is so much made 
of them'? Why not make equal account of some few verses taken from 
the Proverbs, or the Sermon on the Mount 1 ? We reply: the manner 
of their publication plainly showed, that God intended to give them the 
peculiar importance we assign them. They were uttered by Him, to 
His Church, in an audible voice, eis diatagas aggellon, (Acts vii : 
53), with the terrible adjuncts of clouds, and thunders, and lightnings, 
and the sound of a trumpet. They were the only parts of Revelation 
thus spoken. " These words Jehovah spake unto all your assembly in 



226 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the mount, out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and the thick dark- 
ness ; with a great voice ; and He added no more. Deut. v : 22. None 
of the ceremonial nor civic rules were thus distinguished. These ten 
precepts were then graven by God Himself, on two tables of stone ; the 
imperishable material signifying the perpetuity of the Laws — and these 
tablets were to be kept among the most sacred things of their religion. 
Christ, in giving that summary of man's duty into the two precepts of 
love to God, and love to man, is evidently abridging the Decalogue. 
He says that on these two abridged commands, hang all the law and 
the prophets. Therefore all the Old Testament hangs on the Decalogue, 
of which these two are the epitome. These are the grounds, together 
with the obvious comprehensiveness and perfection of the ten precepts, 
(which will be evinced in their exposition) on which the Jewish and 
Christian Churches have always held this Decalogue to be designed as 
the epitome of the whole Law. 

How Divided? — Expositors have not been entirely agreed in the di- 
vision of the Decalogue. Some would have it, that five precepts be- 
longed to the first Table, and five to the second. This opinion seems 
to be dictated only by a fondness for mechanical symmetry. It is now 
generally held, that four precepts composed the first table, and six the 
second. This is the natural division. Of the duties enjoined in the 
first four God is the direct object : of those inculcated in the last six, 
man is the direct object. Thus we conform our division to our Sa- 
viour's summary, love to God, and love to man. Some have supposed 
that they found an evidence of this division in the words of the Apostle 
Paul, when he calls the fifth the "first commandment with promise." 
It is observed that this is not the first containing a promise, if the first 
Table be included ; whence they suppose that the Apostle calls it first, 
with reference to the second Table, at the head of which it stood. 

Rules of Interpretation — The Precepts are Spiritual. — It re- 
mains that we settle the principles upon which the decalogue is to be in- 
terpreted and applied. If it is an epitome of duty, it contains of course 
more than the formal propositions m which it is verbally expressed. 
The first and most important of those principles is that announced by 
St. Paul in the 7th of Romans: 'The Law is spiritual.' It claims to 
regulate, not only the acts, but the desires and thoughts, the inner as 
well as the outer man. For farther proof, note that Christ, in His 
exposition (Matt, v) expressly extends the prohibitions to the secret mo- 
tions of the heart towards sin. Causeless anger is declared to be the 
soul's sin of murder ; lust is the soul's adultery ; coveting, as Paul indi- 
cates, is the soul's theft. I prove the same rule from this : that Christ 
resolves all duties into love, which is an inward state of aifection. And 
last, the same rale must follow from the spiritual nature of the God 
whose law it is. He claims to be 'Searcher of Hearts.' He judgeth 
not by the outward appearance. ' He requireth truth in the inward 
parts.' The law of such a Being must apply chiefly to the inward af- 
fections, as our reason approves. 

The Sin or Duty Named is Representative. — Second : In each 
precept, the chief duty or sin is taken as representative of the various 
lesser duties or sins of that class ; and the overt act is taken as repre- 
sentative of all related affections, and under it they are all enjoined 
or forbidden. Thus, our Saviour teaches us that under the head of 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 227 

murder, angry thoughts and abusive words are also forbidden. We are 
authorized by such examples to conclude that under the one precept, 
* Thou shalt not kill,' all offences against our fellow-men's lives, safety, 
and personal welfare,, are forbidden. So of the other commandments. 
This follows from the fact that the decalogue is a summary. 

Commandment Implied in Prohibition, &c. — .3. To command a 
given class of duties plainly implies a prohibition of the opposite class 
of sins, and vice versa. Thusi Injuries against the life and person of 
fellows are forbidden ; this implies the obligation of active efforts to 
protect them, as we have opportunity. This follows from the practical 
scope of the law. What is the design or intent of the 6th command- 
ment ? Obviously to secure our fellows the enjoyment of life and 
safety* If, then, the obligation is adequate to the practical end, it 
must include active efforts to promote, as well as refraining from in- 
juring, that end. This is confirmed by our Saviour's summation: 
< Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' Hence, while the 6th com- 
mandment says, * Thou shalt not kill ; ' it also means, 4 Thou shalt save 
thy fellow from killing.,' 

Means Included in Duties. — 4. When anything is commanded or 
forbidden, the regular and necessary means and incitements thereto are 
also commanded or forbidden. And when any duty of one party to- 
wards another is enjoined, the relative state or duty thereto is also en* 
joined on the second party towards the first. 

GoD before Man: Moral Precepts before Positive. — 5. The pre- 
cepts of the first table, containing duties towards God, are superior in 
obligation to the duties of the second table, towards man. See Luke 
siv : 26 ; Matt, x ; 37 ; Acts iv; 19 ; Eph. vi ; 1. Whenever the au- 
thority of man clashes with that of God, the former must therefore 
give way. But moral duties, though they be duties of the second ta- 
ble, are superior to mere positive or ceremonial duties of the first ta- 
ble. See Matt, xii : 7 ; Prov* xxi : 3. 

Prohibitions Perpetual, &c. — Last. The prohibitory precepts bind 
us equally at all times ; the mandatory only when the proper objects of 
the duty are present. The precept 'Thou shalt not kill,' binds at every 
moment; the command, ' Honour the father and mother,' only binds 
when we bear suitable relations to some superior. 

V. The Law Perfect — Christ made no Changes of Substance, 
because Immutable. — Many Socinians and Abolitionists, and some 
Papists, in order to support favourite prejudices, strenuously assert 
that the moral law, as given to the Jews, was an imperfect rule, and 
was completed and perfected by Jesus Christ. We grant, indeed, that 
Christ freed this law from the corrupt glosses of tradition, and that He 
showed the true extent of its application. But we deny that He made 
any change or substantial addition. We admit that He carried it far- 
ther in the way of detail, but we deny that He corrected anything of 
its principle. These errorists pretend to claim this as an honour to 
Jesus Christ and His mission, and as evincing His superiority over 
Moses. They hereby do Him dishonour. For the decalogue is as much 
Christ's law as the Sermon on the Mount. He was the authoritative 
agent for giving both. For it was " with the Angel which spake unto 
him in Mount Sina " (Christ, Acts vii : 38) that Moses "received these 
lively oracles to give unto us." Second : It would be dishonorable to 



228 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

a perfect God to suppose that He would reveal to His chosen people? 
as a rule of righteousness, a law which allowed some sin. Then, all 
the holiness produced under that law was spurious. Third ; God for- 
bade that the law should receive addition, Deut. iv : 2, xii ; 32. 
Fourth ; Christ honoured this law, declared it everlasting and un- 
changeable, and said that He came not to destroy, but to fulfil it. 
Fifth : Christ says that on His abridgments of this law bang all the law 
and the prophets. And last : St. Paul, having resolved the precepts 
of this decalogue into the one principle of love (Rom. xiii : 9), says; 
s Love is the fulfilling of the law.' This is said by this minister of the 
new dispensation. And both the Old and New Testaments assert the 
perfection of this Old Testament law. See Ps. xix : 7; Rom. vii: 12 5 
Ps. cxix : 96. 

Precepts of New Testament also jn Old. — In further support of 
this view, I remark that the very particulars in which it is pretended 
Jesus amended, softened, and completed the moral law, are found 
stated just as distinctly, although perhaps not as forcibly in all cases, 
by Moses and the prophets, in their expositions of the decalogue. E. g,, 
the love of enemies, in Matt, v : 44 ; see it in Exod. xxiii : 4, 5, Levit. 
xix: 18. The great laws of love of Matt, xxii: 37, &c; see Deut. vi ; 
4, 5, Levit. xix : 18. The command of benevolence to strangers in 
Luke x : 36, 37 ; see it in Levit. xxiv : 22, xxv : 35, Deut, x: 19. The 
spiritual interpretation of the law, as embracing not only outward acts, 
but the thoughts and desires of the heart; see Levit. xix : 17, 18 7 
Deut. xi ; 13, Ps. xxiv : 4, li : G. Christ's new commandment (Jno. 
xiii : 34) was only 'the old command renewed,' only a re-enactment 
with an additional motive % Christ's love for us. Christ, in His Sermon 
on the Mount, then, and other places, rebukes and corrects, not the law 
itself, nor the Old Testament interpretations of the law, but the erro- 
neous and wicked corruptions foisted upon it by traditions and Phari- 
saic glosses. The moral law could not be completed, because it is as 
perfect as that of God, of whose character it is the impress and trans- 
cript. It cannot be abrogated or relaxed, because it is as immutable 
as He. 



LECTUBE XXIX. 



SYLLABUS. 
THE FIRST TABLE— (Commandments 1, 2, 3.) 

1. What does the 1st Commandment enjoin ? "What does it forbid ? 

2. Discuss, against Romanists, the worship of saints, angels, and relics. 

3. What does the 2nd Commandment forbid and enjoin ? 

4. Discuss, against Romanists, the lawfulness of Image worship. 

5. What does the 3rd Commandment forbid and enjoin ? Are religious vows' 
and oaths imposed by magistrates lawful ? 

See on Whole : Shorter Cat., qu. 44 to 56. Larger do., qu. 100-114. Tur- 
rettin, Loc. XI, qu. 7-14 inclusive. Dick, Lect. 103, 104. Calv, Inst., Bk 
II, ch. 8. Dr. Green's Lect. 37 to 41 inclusive. Council of Trent Decree 
25th, Rom. Cat. of Trent, Pt. Ill, ch. 2, qu. 4-7, aud Pt. IV, ch. 6. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 229 

In the exposition of the precepts, I do not propose to detain you 
with those ordinary particulars, which you may find in your catechisms 
and text-books. I would, once for all, refer you to those authorities, 
especially for answers to the question, what each commandment espe- 
cially enjoins and prohibits. My chief aim, in the few disjointed dis- 
cussions which time will allow, is to enter into a few of the more dis- 
puted and more important questions of morals and ecclesiastical usage, 
which now agitate society and the Church. 

Scope of 1st Commandment. — 1. The affirmative and negative ob- 
ligations of the 1st Commandment all depend upon the great truth of 
Cod's exclusive unity, which we have proved from reason and Scripture. 
The duty of "having Him for our Cod" may be said to be the summa- 
ry of almost all the commands of love, reverence and obedience, which 
so abound in the Scriptures. But we may say that it includes espe- 
cially, under the general idea of rendering Him all the affection and 
service which our nature, His character, and our relations to Him re- 
quire ; the following : The duty, a) of loving Him supremely. (See 
Matt, xxii : 37.) b.) Of regulating all our moral acts by His revealed 
will. Matt, xxviii : 20. c.) Of owning and acknowledging Him public- 
ly. Josh, xxiv : 22. d.) Of promoting His cause and glory in all suit- 
able ways. 1 Cor. x:3l. e.) Of rendering to Him such acts of reli- 
gious worship as He may see fit to demand. Ps. xxix : 2. f.) Of thank- 
ing Him for His benefits. Ps. cvi : 1. g.) Of trusting to His promises. 
Is. xxvi : 4. h.) Of submitting to His chastisements. 1 Pet. v:6. 
i.) Fearing His anger. Ps. lxxxvi : 11. j.) Repenting of having sin- 
ned against Him, Acts xvii : 30, and in short, k.) Chosing Him as the 
portion and eternal inheritance of our souls. Ps. lxxiii : 25 ; xvii: 15. 

Sin of Idolatrous Affections. — The most current breach of this 
commandment in nominally christian communities, is doubtless the sin 
of inordinate affections. Scripture brands these as idolatry, or the wor- 
shipping of another than the true Cod, especially in the case of covet- 
ousness ; (Eph. v : 5 ; Col. iii : 5 ; Job xxxi • 24-28,) and parity of rea- 
soning extends the teaching to all other inordinate desires. We con- 
ceive formal idolatry, as that of the Hindoo, a very foolish and flagrant 
thing : we palliate this spiritual idolatry of passions. Cod classes them 
together, in order to show us the enormity of the latter. What then is it, 
that constitutes the "having of Cod for our Cod I" It includes, a) Love 
for Him stronger than all other affections, b.) Trusting Him, as our 
highest portion and source of happiness, c.) Obeying and serving Him 
supremely, d.) Worshipping Him as He requires. Now that thing to 
which we render these regards and services, is our God, whether it be 
gold, fame, power, pleasure, or friends. 

II. Romish Idolatry. Founded on Creature Mediation. — 
Rome's worship of saints and angels is founded on her assertion of their 
heavenly mediation for us, which she asserts, against 1 Tim. ii : 5. You 
will find this error discussed and refuted in your Senior year, when we 
come to treat and defend the sole mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
I shall now anticipate that conclusion, as the basis of my denial of the 
worship of creatures : only adding that, if you feel curiosity concerning 
Rome's defence of it, you may find her arguments in the places cited 
from the documents of the Council of Trent. 

Arguments against Saint- Worship. — But as there is no heavenly 



2 30 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

mediation of angels or saints, we argue the more, that no religious wor- 
ship can be paid them, without idolatry, a.) Because there are no ex- 
amples nor precepts for it in the Bible. The honor due superiors is 
social and political ; between which and religious worship, there is a 
fundamental difference. In all the cases cited by Rome, of the wor- 
shipping of creature-angels, there was only a hospitable and deferential 
obeisance to persons supposed to be dignified strangers and humans. 
Where there was worship proper, it was always the Angel of the 
Covenant, the Son of (rod, who was worshipped* Compare Gen k xviii : 
2;xix;l with Gen. xviii : 23 ; xxxii:26; xlviii:l6; Josh, v: 14* 
There is not a single example, much less one marked with the divine 
approval, where religious worskip was received by any holy creature, 

b.) Inspired saints and holy angels are represented in every case, as 
repudiating such worship, when attempted, with holy abhorrence. Acts 
xiv: 13-15; Rev.xix: 10; xxii : 9; Matt, iv : 10. 

Douleia also Idolatrous. — c.) Rome herself acknowledges, (Cat. 
Rom. Ft. Ill, Ch. 2, Qu. 4, or Pt. IV> Ch. G, Qu. 3), it would be idolatry 
to worship creatures with the same sort of worship paid to God. Here 
then, their doctors bring in their distinction- of latreia and douleia, 
to justify themselves. This distinction is utterly vain and empty. 
Because first, the usage neither of classic nor biblical Greek justifies it ; 
nor that of the primitive Fathers. The one word, as much as the other, 
is used of the worship peculiar to God Himself. See Matt, vi : 24 ; 
1 Thess. i : 9, &c. The Galatians are rebuked for having served those 
who by nature are no Gods. (Ch, iv : 8), edoulensate. If then the 
douleia of the New Testament is that of Rome, the case is decided. 
But let us see how they distinguish their douleia. Here we say, sec- 
ond : that it is religious worship. This is proved by its being rendered 
in Churchy (God's house), at the altar, in the midst of their liturgies, on 
God's holy day, and mixed with God's own worship. This confusion at 
least is unpardonable. Third : in practice they do not limit themselves 
to Douleia, but ask of the saints, and especially of Mary, gifts most 
essentially divine ; not intercession merely, but protection, pardon, sanc- 
tification, victory over death. Here see Romish Breviaries, passim ; 
and the Stabat Mater. Daniel's Thesaurus Hymnolog, vol. 2, p, 133. 
Streitwolff, JJibrL Symbolici, vol. 2, p. 343, &c Fourth, even if only 
intercession were asked, the douleia would still imply in the saints 
omnipresence, omniscience, infinite goodness, and such-like divine at- 
tributes. To evade this crushing objection, some Romish doctors have 
advanced their figment of the Speculum Trinitatis. They imagine that 
the saints blessed with the beatific vision of God, see reflected in His 
omniscience whatever Be sees, at least of the wants and petitions of the 
Church. But besides the fatal lack of Scriptural warrant, this figment 
is absurd. For to see an overwhelming multitude of objects at once, in 
a mirror, reflected, will confound a finite mind as much as to see them 
directly. And besides;, the figment contradicts Scripture, Matt, xxiv ; 
36; John xv : 15 ; 1 Cor. ii : 11. 

Moral Effects of Creature-Worship. — Rome's saint and angel- 
worship is but baptized paganism, and like all other, it tends to degrade 
the worshippers. Hence, the importance of the prohibition of idolatry. 
Nothing but infinite perfection .should be the object of religious wor- 
ship. The reverence and admiration which worship implies invest 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 231 

every quality of the object worshipped with sanctity. Blemishes are 
always reproduced in the votaries. 1 he worship of an imperfect ob- 
ject is therefore the deification of defects. Rom. i : 25, 26 ; Ps. cxv : 8. 
But the more the worshipper is corrupted, the more degraded will be 
the divinities which he will construct for himself out of his defiled 
heart, until the vile descent is realized which St. Paul describes in 
Rom. i; 22, 23. 

III. Scope op Second Commandment. — A.s the first commandment 
fixes the object, so the second fixes the mode of religious worship. 
Under that most extreme corruption of mode which consists in image- 
worship, all erroneous modes of homage to the true God even, are pro- 
hibited. It may be said in general, that this commandment requires 
those acts and modes of worship for the true God which He hath re- 
quired of us in His word, and prohibits all others. What Protestants 
call will-worship is forbidden, on these obvious grounds : God is in- 
finite, and in large part, inscrutable to creature minds. It is His pre- 
rogative to reveal Himself to us, as He has done. If we form surmises 
how He is to be honoured, they will be partially erroneous; for error 
belongs to man. Hence (as experience too fully confirms), the offering 
of worship of human invention to God has always dishonoured Him, 
and corrupted the worshippers. Our Saviour, therefore, expressly con- 
demns it. Matt, xv : 9. 

IV. Image Worship. — The doctrine of Rome concerning the use of 
images in worship, with its defence, may be seen in the Rom. Cat., Pt. 
Ill, Ch. 2, Que. 9—14 inclusive. You will there remark the curious 
arrangement which makes our second commandment a part of, or ap- 
pendix to the first, and usually prints it with small type. While this 
claims some little patristic countenance, its object is undoubtedly to 
depreciate this command. As the number of ten precepts is too well 
fixed to be called in question, Rome attempts to make it up by divid- 
ing the 10th, without shadow of valid reason, as we shall see. 

Romish Excuses. — Rome grants (Que. 12) that the Deitv should not 
be represented by any shape, because immeuse and inconceivable. To 
concede thus much, indeed, was unavoidable; the prohibitions are so 
plain. But to excuse her image-worship, Que. 13th teacties that the 
making of images of persons of the Trinity is no wrong, for this, 
when correctly understood, is no attempt to represent the Divine es- 
sence ; it only expresses the property and actions which the Scrip- 
ture gives the Persons. Thus, the Father is represented, in supposed 
imitation of Daniel vii : 9, as a hoary old man ; the Son in a human 
figure ; and the Holy Ghost, after Matt, iii : 16, as a dove. The idea 
of trinity in unity is usually represented as a luminous triangle. 

To this evasion I reply, are not the Persons very God 1 Is not 
their essence one, and properly divine'? How, then, can it be right 
to picture them, and wrong to picture Deity? If we may use the 
image of the Person, because it is designed to represent some act 
or property of it, why not of the Deity] Indeed, the luminous tri- 
angle is an attempt to represent the latter. 

God's Example no Rule to Us. — Rome urges also that to figure 
or picture objects of worship cannot be wrong, because God has 
done it. He appears as a man in Gen. xviii, in Gen. xxxii : 24; as 
an angel in Exod. iii : 2 ; as a shekinah, 2 Chron. vii: 1. The Holy 



232 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Ghost appears as a dove, Matt, iii : 16. God also commanded the 
cherubim to be placed in the most sacred part of the oracle, at the 
very part towards which the High Priest directed his worship. God 
also directed Moses to make a brazen serpent and elevate it upon a 
pole. Numb, xxi : 8. 

Now, the general and sufficient answer to this is, that God's doing 
a thing Himself is no warrant whatever for us to presume on imi- 
tating Him. May we kill people at will, because He slays some 
thirty millions annually? His precepts are our rule, not the acts 
of His own sovereignty, which His incommunicable attributes pro- 
perly render unique and inimitable. The representations which God 
has seen fit to make of Himself to one and another prophet were 
temporary, not permanent, occasional — yea, rare — presented only to 
the prophet's own private eye, not to the Church customarily; and 
they were, after all, phantasmata, impressed on the prophet's ima- 
gination in exstatic vision — not actual, material constructions, like 
the idols of men. Chiefly, as visions, they were true, for they were 
to the prophets symbols of some special presence of God, and God 
was in some way specially present then and there. But these fig- 
ures, when used by Papists, are symbols of no such truth ; for God 
has not authorized them to expect any special presence where they 
exhibit the images. They are therefore false, while God's visions 
were true. 

No Image-Worship in Scripture. — The carved Cherubim ©ver the 
mercy-seat were not idols at all, but merely architectural ornaments, 
having, indeed a symbolical fitness, but no more objects of worship than 
the knops and lilies of the carving. The brazen serpent too, was a type, 
and not an object of worship. As well might the Papist bring as a plea, 
the fact that God has represented Christ by bread and wine. See Jno. 
iii : 14. Especially since the coming of the antitype, has this case not a 
shadow of force to excuse idolatry. That its worship was never permit- 
ted is clearly shown by 2nd Kings, xviii : 4 ; where we read that the 
good King Hezekiah, detecting the Jews in this error, had the identical 
serpent crushed, saying "it is brazen." ("It is but brass.") As to the 
picturing and worshipping of the man Jesus, the delineation of His hu- 
man person has more shadow of reason, because He is incarnate. But 
there is no portrait or description of Christ, which is authentic. If there 
was, He is now, when glorified, wholly unlike it. Chiefly ; an image 
could only represent His humanity, as distinguished from His divinity : 
and the former, thus abstracted, is no proper object of worship. The 
use of the crucifix in worship therefore, tendeth to evil. 

All Idolaters profess to look above the idol. — 3. The Council 
of Trent urges that the image is not itself regarded as divine ; but only 
as a visible representation to assist the unlearned especially in con- 
ceiving the real presence of the invisible. To this I reply ; it is just 
the distinction which all the pagans make, except the most besotted. 
Does any one suppose that the acute Hindoo is so stupid as to mistake 
the lump of clay or wood, which yesterday was a clod or a stick, and 
which he saw helpless in the hands of the mechanic, for a true God 1 
If charged with such folly, he makes precisely the Papist's reply : that 
he worships the invisible God through the help of the visible represen- 
tation of Him. So answered the ancient idolaters to the primitive 
Christians. By adopting it the Papist puts himself, where he properly 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 249 

belongs, in the pagan category. And this is the very sin which the 
Scriptures intend to prohibit. An examination of the sin with Aaron's 
calf, Exod. xxxii, of Micah's idolatry, Judges xvii : 3-13, and of the sin 
of Jeroboam, 1 Kings xii : 28, &c, will show that in each case the crimi- 
nal attempt was to worship the true Jehovah, unmistakeably recognized 
by His incommunicable name, through an image supposed appropriate. 

This the very Definition of Idolatry in Scripture Cases. God 
inimitable. — 4. To worship the true God by an image is, then, the 
very thing forbidden, because such a representation is necessarily false. 
For, God being a spiritual, immenie, and invisible Being, to represent 
Him as a limited material form, is a falsehood. To clothe Him with 
the form of any of His creatures, angelic, human, or animal, is the most 
heinous insult to His majesty. God is a Spirit, eognizable by no sense. 
To represent Him by a material, visible and palpable image or picture 
is a false representation. He is omnipresent. To draw or carve Him 
as bounded by an outline, and contained in a local form, belies this at- 
tribute. He is self-existent, and has no beginning. To represent Him 
by what His puny creature made, and what yesterday was not, belies 
His self-existence and eternity. He declares Himself utterly unlike all 
creatures, and incomprehensible by them. To liken Him to any of them 
is both a misrepresentation and insult. Hence, a material image of the 
Godhead, or any Person thereof, is an utter falsehood. Papists used 
to be fond of saying : "Images are the books of the unlearned." We 
reply : they are books then, which teach lies only. The crowning argu- 
ment against them, is that the Scriptures expressly forbid them ; and 
equally plainly, base their prohibition on the fact that no image can 
correctly represent God. Deut. iv : 15, 16 ; Is. xl : 12-18 ; Acts xvii : 
29. "Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves, (for ye saw no 
manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb, 
out of the midst of the fire), lest you corrupt yourselves, and make you 
a graven image," &c. 

V. Scope of Third Commandment. — You are familiar with the an- 
swer to our last head of inquiry, which says the third Commandment 
requireth the holy and reverent use of God's name, tithes, attributes, 
ordinances, word, and works; "and forbiddeth all profaning or abusing 
of anything whereby God maketh Himself known." The scope of this 
precept is to secure a reverential treatment of God and all that sug- 
gests Him, in our speech and other media of communication with each 
other. Its practical importance is justified by what the Apostle James 
teaches us of the responsibility and influence of our faculty of speech. 
When you read His statements, and consider how fully experience jus- 
tifies them ; when you consider the large place which this power of com- 
municating ideas fills in society, you will see why God has elevated the 
sanctification of the tongue into a place among the "ten words." 

Sins forbidden in it. — Every christian is familiar with the idea 
that this precept is meant to prohibit sins of profane cursing and swear- 
ing in all their forms. Among these abuses may also be classed all 
irreverent uses of Sacred Scripture ; all heartless and formal worship 
whether by praying or singing ; all irreverence and levity in the house 
of God during the celebration of His worship or sacraments ; all heed- 
less ejaculations of His names and attributes ; and most flagrantly, per- 
jury. This, the crowning crime of this class, is a breach both of the 



250 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

third and ninth Commandments. It violates the obligations of truth } 
and also violates those of reverence in the most flagrant manner. An 
oath is an appeal to God for the sanction of the asseveration then made. 
It invokes all his attributes in the most formal manner, to act as um- 
pires between the parties, and if the asseveration is falsified, to witness 
and avenge it. "Where an oath is falsely taken, it is a heaven-daring 
attempt to enlist the Almighty in the sanction of the creature's lie ; and 
is thus, either the most outrageous levity, or the most outrageous im- 
piety, of which he can be guilty. 

Lawful Oaths and Vows not Forbidden. — But we do not hold 
that the reverential occasional use of religious vows, or the serious 
taking of the oath trom the civil magistrate, is a breach of this com- 
mandment. You are aware that the Quakers, and some other Chris- 
tians, hold all oaths unlawful. We base our view on the following 
reasons : 

Moses expressly commands the people to swear by the name of Jeho- 
vah, whenever tbey did swear. Deut. vi : 18. This surely implies that 
there is a right and proper time to swear. The Israelites were care- 
fully instructed how to swear. Levit. xix : 12. Oaths were appointed 
to be administered by Divine authority, in certain cases. Exod. xxii : 
11 ; Numb, v: 19. Surely God would not require His people to sin ! 
We find that God sware ; and "because He could swear by no greater, 
He sware by Himself." His example is worthy of mention here, al- 
though we do not presume a right to make it our rule in every case. 
We find that the apostles also, and especially Paul, frequently ap- 
pealed to God in oaths. Rom. i : 9 ; 2 Cor. i : f 3 ; Gal. i : 20. These 
expressions involve all the essentials of an oath. But we have a more 
indisputable example. Jesus Christ took an oath, when it was ten- 
dered to Him by Caiaphas the High Priest, acting as an authorized 
(though a wicked) magistrate of his people. Matt, xxvi : 63, 64. When 
the Chief Priest said; " I adjure thee [I swear Thee] by the living 
God," Christ, who had before refused to respond, immediately gave an 
affirmative answer, thereby taking the oath tendered Him. Let it be 
noticed, also, that in this He was acting in His human capacity. These 
New Testament examples also effectually estop the plea, untenable in 
all cases, that legislation given by Moses was corrected by Christ, so 
that the latter made things sins, which Moses made right. For all this 
was under the new dispensation, or at least after the utterance of the 
commands by Christ which furnish the argument of the Quakers. 

Supposed Prohibition in New Testament. — Those commands are 
found in Matt, v: 34 and 37; Jas. v: 12. Their claim is, that these 
prohibitions are meant to forbid oaths under all possible circumstances ; 
that the language is absolute, and we have no right to limit it. I re- 
ply, that if this view be pressed, all that is gained will be to represent 
Christ and Paul as expressly violating the new law. An understand- 
ing of the circumstances relieves the case. The Jewish elders had cor- 
rupted the third commandment by teaching that a man might inter- 
lard his common conversation with oaths, provided he did not swear 
falsely. They also taught that one might swear by anything else than 
the name of God, as his own head, or Jerusalem. Against these cor- 
ruptions our Saviour's precept is aimed. In our common intercourse 
we are not to swear at all, because the suitable and solemn juncture is 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 251 

lacking. When that juncture is present, what more reasonable than 
the appeal to God ; that God who is, by His omniscience and provi- 
dence, the actual witness and umpire of all such declarations. But, 
in conclusion, it is a great abuse for the magistrate to multiply oaths 
on frivolous occasions. 



LECTUEE XXX. 



SYLLABUS. 
FIRST TABLE— (Fourth Commandment.) 

1. What is required and forbidden in the Fourth Commandment? 
Shorter Cat., Qu. 57-62. Larger Cat., Qu. 115-121. 

2. How is the Sabbath to be sanctified ? 
Larger Cat., Qu. 117-120. Ridgeley, Qu. 117. 

3. Give the practical reasons for the careful observance of the Sabbath. 
Largar Cat., Qu. 120, 121. Justin Edward's Sabbath Manual. 

4. Is the observance of the Lord's day now binding jure dwino f 

1. Show that the Sabbath was in force before Moses. 

2. Show that the Command is moral and perpetual, and not merelv positive, 

3. Explain the teachings of the New Testament thereon. 

4. By what authority do we now substitute the first day for the seventh ? 

5. Give history of opinions and usages. 

Consult on whole: Calvin Inst. Bk. II, Ch. viii, 4tb Commandment, and 
Commentaries on Matt, xii, and Col. ii : 16,17. Dr. Green's Lectures, 
42, 43. Turrett., Loc. XI, Qu. 13, 14. Appendix to Fairbairn's Ty- 
pology, 2nd edition. 

Diversity Accounted for. — There is, perhaps, no subject of Chris- 
tian practice on which there is, among sincere Christians, more practi- 
cal diversity and laxity of conscience than the duty of Sabbath ob- 
servance. We find that, in theory, almost all Protestants now profess 
the views once peculiar to Presbyterians and other Puritans ; but, in 
actual life, there is, among good people, a complete jumble of usages, 
from a laxity which would almost have satisfied the party of Archbishop 
Laud, up to the sacred strictness ef the " Sabbatarians" whom he and 
his adherents reviled and persecuted. It is a curious question : how it 
has come about that the consciences of devout and sincere persons have 
allowed them such license of disobedience to a duty acknowledged and 
important; while on other points of obligation equally undisputed, the 
Christian world endeavors, at least, to maintain the appearance of uni- 
form obedience. The solution is probably to be found, in part, in the 
historical fact of which many intelligent Christians are not aware — that 
the communions founded, at the Reformation, were widely and avow- 
edly divided in opinion as to the perpetuity of the Sabbath obligation. 
A number of the reformation churches, including some of the purest, 
professed that they saw no obligation in the Scriptures to any peculiar 



252 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Sabbath observance ; and the neglect of everything except attendance 
on the public exercises of Christianity, and that cessation of secular la- 
bor required by secular statutes was, in them, at least consistent. Now 
the descendants of these communions, in this mixed country, live dis- 
persed among the descendants of Presbyterians and Puritans ; and 
while they no longer defend the looser theory of their forefathers, they 
retain the traditionary practices and customs in their use of the sacred 
day. Thus, by example and the general intermingling of religions, a 
remiss usage is propagated, which is far beneath the present professed 
theory of Protestant Christendom. And hence, we conceive that it will 
be interesting and profitable to give a history of opinions on this sub- 
ject, before we proceed to that full discussion of the whole grounds of 
our belief and practice which we shall attempt. 

I. Two opinions prevalent. — It may be stated then, in general 
terms, that since the primitive times of Christianity two diverse opin- 
ions have prevailed in the Christian world. The first is that adopted 
by the Romish, Lutheran, and most of the continental communions in 
Europe, including, it must be confessed, those founded by Calvin. This 
theory teaches that the proper sanctification of one day from every 
seven was a ceremonial, typical, and Jewish custom, established when 
the Levitical institutions were introduced ; and, of course, abrogated by 
the better dispensation, along with the rest of the typical shadows. 
The Lord's day is, indeed, worthy of observance as a Christian festival, 
because it is the weekly memorial of the blessed resurrection, and the 
example of the primitive Church commends it; not because its obliga- 
tion is now jure dlvino. The cessation of our worldly labors is a benefi- 
cent and commendable civil institution ; and while the magistrates en- 
join it, is, for this reason, of course to be practised by all good citizens. 
Public and associated worship is also a duty of Christians; and, in or- 
der that it may be associated, it must be upon a stated day and hour; 
and what day so appropriate as this, already famous for the great event 
of the new dispensation ; and set apart by civil laws from the purposes 
of business. But this is all. To observe the whole day as a religious 
rest, under the supposition of a religious obligation, would be to judaize, 
to remand ourselves to the bondage of the old and darker dispensation. 

The second opinion is that embodied in the Westminster symbols, 
and, to the honour of Puritanism be it said, first avowed in modern 
times, even among Protestants, by the Puritans of England. This is, 
that the setting apart of some stated portion of our time to the special 
and exclusive worship of God, ia a duty of perpetual and moral obli- 
gation (as distinguished from positive or ceremonial), and that our 
Maker has, from the creation, and again on Sinai, appointed for all 
races and ages, that this portion shall be one day out of seven. But 
when the ceremonial dispensation of Levi was superadded to this and 
the other institutions of the original patriarchal religion, the seventh 
day did, in addition, become a type and a Levitical holy-day ; and the 
theory admits that this feature has passed away with the Jewish cere- 
monial. After the resurrection of Christ, the perpetual Divine obli- 
gation of a religious rest was transferred to the first day of the week, 
and thence to the end of the world. The Lord's day is the Christian's 
sabbath, by Divine and apostolic appointment, and is to be observed 
with the. same religious spirit enjoined upon $he patriarchs, and the 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 253 

Israelites, abating those features which proceeded from its ceremonial 
use among the latter, and from their theocratic government. 

Papal Opinion. — Among the advocates of the first opinion is to be 
adduced first the Roman Catholic communion. This statement must, 
however, be made with qualification ; for the " Romish Catechism " of 
Pope Pius V, embodying the opinions of the Council of Trent (P. Ill, 
Ch. iv), treats of the Lord's day more scripturally, in some respects, 
than many Protestants. But this correctness of opinion is grievously 
marred by the doctrine that the other Church holidays are sustained 
by equal autbority with the Lord's day — the authoritative tradition of 
the Church. Rellarmine also argues, that it must be allowable to the 
true Church to make the observance of sacred days of human appoint- 
ment binding on the conscience, because otherwise the Church would 
have no sacred days at all, since none whatever are enjoined in the 
New Testament. This reasoning obviously proceeds upon the assump- 
tion that there is no other sort of obligation for the Lord's day than 
for a Church festival. The well-known practice of Romish Christians, 
prevalent in all Popish countries, and unrebuked by the priesthood, 
sustains exactly that theory of Sabbath observance which we first de- 
scribed. After the duties of confession and hearing mass are performed 
in the morning, the rest of the holy-day is unhesitatingly devoted to 
idleness, amusements, or actual vice. 

Lutheran Opinion. — The Lutheran communion, as ordered by Lu- 
ther, Melancthon, and their coadjutors, held that it was lawful and 
proper for Church authorities to ordain days and rites, not contrary to 
the letter or spirit of Scripture, but additional to those appointed 
therein. It was, indeed, one of the most constant and noble parts of 
their testimony against Ptome, that it was spiritual tyranny for any 
Church authority, however legitimate, to ordain anything contrary to 
the letter or spirit of Scripture, or to enforce any ordinance of human 
authority, however innocent, as binding on the Christian conscience, or 
as necessary to acceptance with God. But they taught that the rulers 
of the Church might lawfully institute rites, ordinances, and holy- 
days, consonant to the Word of God, though additional to those set 
down in it ; and that they might lawfully change such ordinances, from 
time to time, as convenience and propriety required. But they could 
only invite, they could not compel the compliance of their brethren ; 
and this compliance was to be rendered, not of necessity, but from con- 
siderations of Christian comity, peace, and convenience. When days 
or ordinances additional to Scripture were thus enjoined, and thus ob- 
served, it was held proper, lawful and praiseworthy, in both rulers and 
ruled. And the Lutheran symbols expressly assert that it was by this 
kind of Church authority, and not jure divino, that the observance of 
the Lord's day obtained among Christians; and that it could not be 
scripturally made binding on the conscience of Christians any more 
than the observance of Easter or Christmas, or of any other day newly 
instituted by a Church court, in accordance with Christian convenience 
and edification. They also teach that the Sabbath, with its strict and 
enforced observances, was purely a Levitical institution. Before pro- 
ceeding to substantiate this statement from their symbols, it may be 
remarked, in passing, that we have here an explanation of the fact that 
Neandex and other German antiquaries so heedlessly surrender th§ 



254 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

apostolic authority of certain Church usages, which they, in common 
with the Luthern Church, yet retain. The historian just mentioned 
says, for instance, that he finds no evidence that the baptism of infants 
was ever practised by the apostles. But this admission does not, to 
him, carry the consequences which it would involve with an Immersion- 
istj Independent, or Presbyterian. He can still defend and practise 
the rite, as seemly and lawful, because he holds that Church authority. 
is a sufficient warrant for the observance of a rite so consonant to the 
spirit of the apostles. It is a pity that Immersionists do not tell this 
part of the story also, when they iguorantly quote his opinions con- 
cerning baptism. 

But to return. In the 28th article of the Augsburg Confession, 
which treats of "the power of the bishops or clergy," we find the fol- 
lowing [We will take the liberty of italicising those phrases which we 
wish to be particularly weighed] : "What, then, should be held con- 
cerning Sunday and other similar Church ordinances and ceremonies?" 
To this our party make the following reply : That the bishops or pastors 
may make regulations, in order that things may be carried on orderly in 
the Church, not in order to obtain the grace of God, nor yet in order to 
atone for sins, or to bind the consciences of men with them, to hold 
them as necessary services of God, and to regard them as if they com- 
mit sin, if they break them without offence to others. Thus St. Paul, 
in the Corinthians, ordains that the women in the congregation should 
cover their heads; 1 Cor. xi : 5. * * * * 

" In like manner is the regul ition concerning Sunday, concerning Easter, 
concerning Pentecost, and the like holy-days and rites. Those, then, 
who are of opinion that the regulation of Sunday instead of the Sab- 
bath, was established as a thing necessary, err very much. For the 
Holy Scripture ha? abolished the Sabbath, and it teaches that all cere- 
monies of the old law, since the revelation of the Gospel, may be dis- 
continued. And yet, as it was of need to ordain a certain day, so that 
the people might know when they should assemble, the Christian 
Church ordained Sunday for that very purpose, and possessed rather 
more inclination and willingness for this alteration, in order that the 
people might have an example of Christian liberty, that they might 
know that neither the observance of the Sabbath, nor of any other day, 
is indispensable." Melancthon, in the 8th article of his "apology," 
{"Of human ordinances in the Church") briefly asserts the same view 
" Further, the most ancient ordinances however in the church, as the 
three chief festivals, Sundays, and the like, which were established for 
the sake of order, union and tranquility, we observe with willingness. 
And with regard to these, our teachers preach to the people in the most 
commendatory manner ; in the meantime, however, holding forth the 
view, that they do not justify before God." In Luther's Shorter Cate- 
chism., (which, singularly enough, follows the coinmen Popish arrange- 
ment of merging the second commandment under the first, so that the 
fourth becomes the third,) is the following : 

The Third Commandment. — Thou shalt sanctify the Sabbath day. 
What does this imply f 

Ans. "That we should fear and love God, so that we may not despise 
the preaching of the Gospel, and His word ; but keep it holy ; willingly 
hear and learn it." Here there is a marked generality of language, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 255 

and evasion of everything like the injunction of a Christian Sabbath. 
And, in Luther's Larger Catechism, under the third commandment, it 
is said expressly : " This commandment, therefore, with respect to its 
outward and literal sense, does not concern us Christians ; for it is 
wholly an external thing, like other ordinances of the Old Testament, 
confined to certain conditions, persons, times, and places, which are now 
all abrogated through Christ. But, in order that we may draw up for 
the uninformed, a Christian sense of what God requires of us in this 
commandment, it is necessary to observe that we keep the Sabbath day, 
not for the sake of intelligent and learned Christians — for these have 
no need of it — but, in the first place, on account of physical reasons aud 
necessities, which nature teaches and requires for the common mass of 
people, men-servants, and maid-servants, who attend during the whole 
week to their labor and employments, so that they may also have a day 
set apart for rest and recreation ; in the second, mostly for the purpose 
of enabling us to embrace time and opportunity on these Sabbath-days, 
(since we cannot otherwise embrace them,) to attend to Divine service, 
so that we may assemble ourselves to hear and treat of the Word of 
God, and afterwards to praise Him in singing and prayer."' 

Luther, however, adds that no one should deceive himself by sup- 
posing that the duty of associated rest and worship is fulfilled by sim- 
ply leaving off labor, and presenting their bodies in the church, while, 
like the Papists, they indulge a stupid inattention to the service. 

Such then, is the theory of the great Lutheran community, distinctly 
and intelligently avowed ! Nor is there any reason to suppose that it 
is not as explicitly held at this day by many of their divines, perhaps 
by the bulk of them ; while the almost universal laxity of Sabbath ob- 
servance in Protestant Europe (continental) shows that the theory bears 
it legitimate fruit in practice. It was related a few years ago by an 
eminent American, that when visiting the pious Neander, he took the 
opportunity to enquire of him whether the rumour were true, which had 
been spread concerning Gesenius, the great Hebraist; that he was ac- 
customed to come down from Halle to Berlin at the end of the week, in 
order to enjoy the Sunday night's theatricals in the Capital ; which 
were more brilliant that night than any other of the week. Neander 
answered that it was true ; but the offence would not strike German 
christians as it would Americans. For himself, he said, he would not 
go to theatricals on any day, because he considered them unfriendly to 
spirituality ; but he should not scruple to do on the Lord's day, any 
thing which it was right for a Christian to do on any other day. And 
in accordance, he did actually secure the attendance of his American 
visitor (unawares on his part) at a sober convivial entertainment the 
very next Sunday afternoon ! 

The evangelical Christians of Germany seem now to apprehend the 
prime necessity of a stricter Sabbath-observance for the interests of 
piety; and have recently combined to promote it. But it will be vain 
for them to attempt to engraft such a reform on this doctrinal theory 
of Lutheranism. No plausible tinkering with a doctrine so fundament- 
ally erroneous will suffice. The connection between a false theory and 
a vicious practice is too inevitable. If the reform is to be established 
successfully, its foundation must be laid in the retraction of these opin- 



256 SYLLABUS AND NOTE& 

ions, and the expieit adoption of the Puritan and Presbyterian theory 
of the Lord's day. 

It may here be added, that the Mennonite Church, both in Europe 
and America, holds substantially the Lutheran ideas of the Sabbath, 
and that their practice is influenced by them in a similar way. When 
this communion, led by Menno Simonisfc, set about ridding themselves 
of the reproach of fanatical Anabaptism, they were careful to assume 
so mnch of the prevalent religion as they could consistently with their 
essential peculiarities, in order to substantiate their plea that they were 
no longer a radical political sect, but a proper, evangelical denomination. 
The prevalent Protestantism of those countries was Lutheran ; and 
hence the theology of the Mennonites, and their ideas of Sabbath ob- 
servance are largely Lutheran. The articles of their most current con- 
fession are silent concerning the observance of the Lord's day. 

Socinian Opinion. — Next in order should be mentioned the opinions 
of the Socinian sect. The Racovian Catechism, the recognized Con- 
fession of this body, in the 16th century, states their erroneous belief 
with unmistakeable precision and brevity. Under the fourth command- 
ment are the following questions and answers : 

" What is the fourth commandment?" 

" Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." 

" What dost thou believe concerning this commandment ?" 

" I believe that it is removed under the new covenant, in the way in 
which other ceremonies, as they are called, are taken away." 

" Why, then, was it inserted in the decalogue?" 

"Thus, that it might be manifest the most absolute part of the Mo- 
saic law was not perfect, and that some indication might exist of this 
fact, that a law was to succeed the Mosaic law, by far more perfect, the 
law, namely, of our Lord Jesus Christ." 

" Did, or did not, Christ ordain that we should observe the day which 
they call Lord's day, in place of the Sabbath? 

" Not at all ; since the religion of Christ entirely removes the dis- 
tinction of days, just as it does the other ceremonies, as they are called ; 
as the Apostle clearly writes in Col. ii : 16. But since we see that the 
Lord's day has been celebrated from of old time by Christians, we per- 
mit the same liberty to all Christians." 

A day of religious rest, then, according to Socinians is utterly abolish- 
ed by Christ, just as the other Levitical ceremonies. There is no obliga- 
tion whatever, but in order to avoid the odium of unnecessarily disturb- 
ing venerated customs, such Socinians as choose, are ■permitted to observe 
the Lord's day. It will be a harmless peculiarity! To understand the 
second and third answers, it should be remembered that the Socinians 
wholly deny that Christ did any vicarious or atoning work. Having 
denied this, they are of course pressed with the question: " How, then, 
is He more than any other eminent prophet ; and why are such peculiar 
names and honours given Him by Scripture? Why is an importance so 
entirely peculiar attached by it to His mission. To find a plausible 
answer to this hard query ; to invent a nodus vindice dignus, they say that 
one peculiarity of His mission was to reveal a code of morality greatly 
more pure and complete than that of Moses and the prophets. And 
thus they have a constant polemical interest in depreciating and mis- 
representing the moral code of Moses. So, forsooth, the All-wise 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 257 

placed this supererogatory precept, which was of only temporary au- 
thority, in the summary of His eternal, moral law, in order to give peo- 
ple a standing hint of the fact that this code was far from heing com- 
plete ! Since the coming of Christ, men need no such hint, according 
to the Socinians; for one great part of Christ's mission was to tell us 
clearly this very thing. And before the coming of Christ, this precept 
could not serve that purpose ; because the Old Testament contained no 
indication whatever, that this was not as good and bona fide a command- 
ment as all the rest. One feels strongly tempted to characterize this 
nonsensical position, with the unsavoury phrase, which Calvin usually 
applied to the grosser absuridties of his opponents, as \a putidum com- 
mentum. 

Opinion of Anglican Church. — As to the ground held by the An- 
glican church, concerning the authority of the Lord's day, its standards* 
are indecisive. It holds the same, opinion with the Augsburg Confes- 
sion, concerning the power of the church to ordain rites, ceremonies, 
and holy-days, additional, but not contrary to the Scriptures ; but it 
has not observed the scriptural modesty of the Lutherans, in enforcing 
the uniform observance of these human appointments. While its theory 
on this point is not greatly more exaggerated in words than that of the 
Augsburg Confession, its practice has been unspeakably more tyranni- 
cal. The twentieth of the "Thirty-nine Articles," ("Of the authority 
of the Church,") says : "The church hath power to decree rites or cere- 
monies, and authority in controversies of faith ; and yet it is not lawful 
for the church to ordain anything that is contrary to God's Word writ- 
ten, &e." The thirty-fourth says : "Whosoever, through his private 
judgment, willingly and purposely doth openly break the traditions 
and ceremonies of the church, which be not repugnant to the Word of 
God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought % to be 
rebuked openly, (that other may fear to do the like,)as he that offend- 
ed against the common order of the church, and hurteth the authority 
of the magistrate, and woundeth the consciences of the weak brethren." 
The articles contain no nearer reference to the Lord's day. Our pur- 
pose in quoting these words will be seen in connexion with the follow- 
ing from the thirteenth of the ecclesiastical canons and constitutions : 

"Due celebration of Sundays and holy-days. — All manner of 
persons within the Church of England, shall from henceforth celebrate 
and keep the Lord's day, commonly called Sunday, and other holy days, 
according to God's holy will and pleasure, and the orders of the Church 
of England prescribed in that behalf," &c. 

The Church of England, then, is not, by her standards, definitely com- 
mitted to that loose theory which we have unfolded ; but the associa- 
tion of Sundays and holy-days, as equal in their claims, and the nature 
of their authority, is significant. The Church, according to these arti- 
cles, has power to ordain days, additional to those appointed in Scrip- 
ture, provided they are not condemned in Scripture ; and to enforce 
their observance by censures. And it is plainly implied that the obli- 
gation to keep a Sunday is only of the same character with the obliga- 
tion to keep an Epiphauy or Good Friday. Both are alike according to 
God's holy will ; but it is God's will, not pronounced in Scripture, but 
through the authoritative decree of the Church. It was the primitive 
Church which introduced the festivals of Epiphany and others ; and it 



258 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

was the same authority which introduced Sunday. As the thirty-fourth 
article claims that the same church authority which made, can unmake 
or alter these appointments, it would seem that even the Lord's day 
might be liable to change by human authority. It is not easy to see 
how a Protestant, who believes that the traditions and ordinances of 
the church are not divinely infallible, and who yet places the Lord's 
day and the Church holy-days on the same l>asis of authority, can con- 
sistently esteem the obligations of the Sabbath, as sacredly as, in our 
judgment, they require. Yet we doubt not that many devout and evan- 
gelical Episcopalians, both in this country and in England, do regard 
them as highly as the best Christians in the world. The opposite prac- 
tices and feelings of many of the "high church," are well known. Their 
4 worst examplar is to be seen in Laud and his "Declaration of Sports." 
The Episcopalians of his party, in that day, were the most bitter ene- 
mies of those holy men, who first restored to the Protestant world the 
blessed doctrine that the Church of God still possessed its Sabbath by 
Divine authority ; branding them with the names of Judaizers and Sab- 
batarians. 

Opinion of Calvin. — We proceed now to state the opinions of Cal- 
vin, and some of the Reformed Churches. By consulting Calvin's In- 
stitutes, (B. II., chap. 8), it will be seen that his views of Sabbath- 
observance are substantially those of Luther. He states that, among 
the Israelites, there were three grounds for the observance of the sev- 
enth day ; first, that it might be a type of that cessation of the works of 
self-righteousness which true believers practice; second, that there 
might be a stated day for public worship ; and third, that domestic ani- 
mals and servants might enjoy a merciful rest from bodily labor. Only 
the last two of these grounds exist, according to Calvin, under the New 
Testament. Hence be says (Ch. 8, Sec. 33) : "We celebrate it not with 
scrupulous rigor, as a ceremony which we conceive to be a figure of some 
spiritual mystery, but only use it as a remedy necessary to the preserva- 
tion of order in the Church." In the previous section he says : "Though 
the Sabbath is abrogated, yet it is still customary among us to assemble 
on stated days, for hearing the Word, for breaking the mystic bread, 
and for public prayers ; and also to allow servants and laborers a remis- 
sion from their labor." And in section 34 : "Thus vanish all the dreams 
of false prophets, who in past ages have infected the people with a Jew- 
ish notion, affirming that nothing but the ceremonial part of this com- 
mandment, which, according to them, is the appointment of the seventh 
day, has been abrogated ; but that the moral part of it, that is, the ob- 
servance of one day in seven, still remains. But this is only changing 
the day in contempt of the Jews, while they retain the same opinion of 
the holiness of a day; for, on this principle, the same mysterious signifi- 
cation would be attributed to particular days, which formerly obtained 
among the Jews." And in the same teuour, he remarks upon Col. 
ii : 16 : ("Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat or in drink, or in 
respect of a holy-day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath-days." 
"Such a distinction (of days) suited the Jews, to observe sacredly the 
appointed days, by separating them from other days. Among Cliris- 
tians, such a distinction hath ceased. But, somebody will say that .we . 
still retain some observance of days. I answer, that we by no means 
observe them, as if there were any religion in holy-days, or as if it-were 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 2 5 

not right to labor then ; but the regard is paid to polity and good order, 
not to the days." In the Genevan Catechism, written by Calvin for the 
Church of Geneva, and dedicated to the ministers of East Frisia in the 
Netherlands, the statements already quoted from the Institutes are so 
exactly reproduced, that they need not be repeated. In the Heidel- 
burg Catechism, the symbol of the German Roformed Church in the 
Palatinate, the opinions of Calvin are adopted, though stated with such 
brevity, that we learn them in part by inference. The one hundred 
and third question and answer are : 

" What doth God enjoin in the fourth commandment?" 
" First : That the ministry of the Gospel, and the schools be pre- 
served ; and that I, with others, diligently frequent the Divine assem- 
blies, industriously hear the Word of God, make use of the sacraments, 
join my prayers also to the public prayers, and bestow something on the 
poor according to my ability. Second : That in all my life I shall ab- 
stain from wicked actions, permitting the Lord to do His work in me 
through His Holy Spirit, and thus shall begin that everlasting Sabbath 
in this life." The ideas of Calvin are here so evidently involved, and 
there is so studious an avoidance in the generality of the terms, of all 
reference to the consecration of a given day, by Divine authority, under 
the New Testament, that we cannot be mistaken in our surmises. 

Arminian Opinion. — To those who are aware of the close relation- 
ship between Socinianism and Arminianism, it will not be surprising 
that the latter sect, at its birth, adopted an idea of the Lord's day only 
less relaxed than that of the former. It is unnecessary to multiply 
citations ; a single passage from Limborch, one of the distinguished 
heads of their seminary in Amsterdam, in his commentary on itomans 
xiv : 5, will be both sufficiently distinct and authoritative : 

Romans xiv : 5. "Another esteemeth every day alike," viz : (explains 
Limborch) "The converts to Christ from among the Gentiles, on whom 
the burden of the ritual law was never imposed, did not recognize this 
distinction of days, but esteemed all days equal, and one no more noble 
than another. It is true, indeed, that the apostles and primitive Church 
were already accustomed to assemble in sacred meetings the first day of 
the week ; but not because they believed that day more eminent than 
any other, nor because they believed the rest of that day to be a part of 
Divine worship, as the rest of the seventh day had been under the law ; 
nor that it must be observed with rigor, as formerly, under the law. 
By no means : but because it was convenient to designate some time for 
sacred exercises ; and that a man might the better be at leisure for them, 
rest also from daily labor was required. The first day of the week, on 
which the Lord rose from the dead, (which is thus called the Lord's day, 
liev. i : 10), seemed most meet to be destined to these services; but not 
because it was judged more holy, or because a rigid rest and cessation 
of all work in observing that day was a part of Divine worship. For 
thus, it would have been not a taking off of the yoke, but a shifting of it.' 1 
Continental usage. — On the whole, it may be said that the Protest- 
ant Churches of Continental Europe have all occupied this ground, 
concerning the sanctification of the Lord's day. These Churches, prop- 
erly sperking, have never had the Sabbath ; for it has only been to them 
a holy-day, ranking no higher than Christmas or Easter, or a season set 
apart by civil enactment, or a convenient arrangement for concert in 



•260 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

public •worship ; and not a sacred day of Divine appointment. The man- 
ner in which it is desecrated, commonly, throughout the Protestant 
States of the continent is shocking to the feelings and usages of strict, 
American Protestants ; and seems to them to approximate only too much 
to the license Popery. But we have now seen that this desecration is 
not an accidental irregularity : it is the natural and proper result of the 
theory in which these Churches have been educated since the reforma- 
tion. That the greatest and best of the reformers should have failed 
to embrace the truth concerning the Lord's day, is indeed no subject 
of surprise. That men emerging at a bound from the meridian dark- 
ness of Popery into Gospel light should see all things correctly at first, 
was not to be expected. That they saw so many things "eye to eye," 
and erred in so few, is a wonder, only to be explained by the presence 
of the Spirit of all truth. It is wholesome to become acquainted with 
their few errors, and to explode them ; for it will tend to correct that 
oderweening spirit of party which ever prompts Christians to call them- 
selves by the name of men, like those who said : "I am of Paul, and I 
of Apollos, and I of Cephas." But it may well be inquired also, 
whether a part of the spiritual decline which has almost extinguish- 
ed the true light in the ancient seats of Luther, Calvin, Witsius 
and De Moor, is not due to this misconception of Sabbath obliga- 
tion, and its consequent neglect. The sacred observance of one day 
in seven is G-od's appointed means for the cultivation of piety: when 
piety vanishes, orthodoxy necessarily follows it in due time. 

Dr. Bound. — As has been already indicated, the first successful 
attempt to establish the theory of a Christian Sabbath, since the 
reformation, was made among the English Puritans. About the year 
1595, a dissenting minister of Suffolk, Dr. Nicholas Bound, published 
a book entitled " Sabbatum Veteris et Novi Testamenti, or, The True 
Doctrine of the Sabbath," in which he advocated the view afterwards 
adopted by the Westminster Assembly. This treatise had great cur- 
rency among the devout dissenters, and evangelical churchmen, and 
was the beginning of a discussion which continued, under repeated at- 
tempts for its suppression by high church authorities, until the doc- 
trines of the Puritans became those of the bulk of sincere Christians 
throughout Great Britain and the American colonies. Archbishop 
Whitgift condemned Dr. Bound's book to suppression. James I pub- 
lished his Declaration of Sports, encouraging the people to dancing, 
trials of archery, erecting May-poles, and other amusements, at any 
hours of the Lord's day not occupied by public worship. The flood 
of immoralities introduced by this measure became so odious, that the 
secular magistrates, at the urgent instance of the people themselves, 
suppressed the Sunday sports. Under Charles I, Laud invoked the 
aid of his clergy to re-establish them ; and the strange spectacle was 
seen, of the laity petitioning against the profane desecration of the 
sacred day, and their spiritual guides compelling them to perpetrate 
it ! (Neal, Hist, of the Puritans, Vol. I, Ch. 8 ; Vol. II, Ch. 2-5.) 

Westminster Assembly. — The first great Synod which ever pro- 
pounded, in modern ages, the true doctrine of the Lord's day, was 
the Westminster Assembly. Their Confession of Faith, which is now 
the standard of the Scotch, Irish and American Presbyterian, and of 
many independent churches, states the truth so luminously, (ch. xxi, 



OE LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 261 

sec. 7-8), that we shall repeat their words here, though familiar, as 
the best statement of the proposition and text of our sebsequent dis- 
cussion. 

Sec. 7- "As it is of the law of nature that, in general, a due propor- 
tion of time be set apart for the worship of God ; so in His word, by a 
positive, moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men, in all 
ages, He hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath, to 
be kept holy unto Him ; which from the beginning of the world to the 
resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week ; and, from the 
resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which 
in Scripture is called the Lord's day, and is to be continued to the end 
of the world as the Christian Sabbath." 

Sec. 8. " This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men 
after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common af- 
fairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their 
own works, words, and thoughts, about their worldly employments and 
recreations; but also are taken up the whole time in the public and 
private exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and 
mercy." 

As the doctrinal articles of the Westminster Assembly were gener- 
ally adopted by the Calvinistic dissenters of England and America, 
they also embraced these views of the Sabbath. The Immersionist de- 
nominations of these countries, which arrogate to themselves the title 
of Baptists, came from a mixed origin. The first idea and nucleus of 
the sect in England were from the Anabaptism of the Netherlands and 
lower Germany. That continental sect was at first everywhere perse- 
cuted, and in the long and terrible oppression of Protestantism, in the 
Netherlands, under Charles V, and his son, Philip of Spain, they in 
common with Lutherans and Reformed, emigrated in vast numbers to 
every accessible place of refuge. The commercial and religious affini- 
ties of England and the Low Countries were then very close ; so that 
thousands of the Protestant middle classes of that wretched land were 
soon found settled in London, Norwich and other towns. It was thus 
especially, that Anabaptism took root on English soil. The Baptist 
Churches, afterwards formed, received their other element from the 
Churches of the Calvinistic Independents, in which, for a considerable 
time, immersion and psedobaptism were both practiced by compromise. 
This independent element was Calvinistic and Sabbatarian ; the Ana- 
baptist material was Arminian in doctrine, and practiced the loose 
views of Luther concerning the Sabbath. Hence, the Baptist Churches 
of England and those of this country, which are their counterparts, dif- 
fered among themselves, and presented mixture and diversity of usage 
on both these points. The new American sect, self-styled Reformers, 
popularly known as Campbellite, has adopted the boldest view pro- 
pounded by the Socinians ; presenting here another evidence of its So- 
cinian tendencies. 

Wesleyanism is an offshoot of the Anglican JChureh, with the mystical 
Arminianism of the Moravians, and of Holland, superinduced upon it. 
The Lutheranism of this country claims to be a reproduction of that of 
Germany, onlv stripped of its Erastianism and doctrine of religious es- 
tablishments. It takes pride in republishing the symbols of Melanc- 
thon and Luther. The Episcopacy of America strives to be a counter- 



262 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

part of that of England. The reader will now easily comprehend, from 
this historical review, what would naturally he the views of these sev- 
eral denominations concerning Sabbath-observance, and what is the legit- 
imate source of that diversity, vagueness and license, which are exhibited 
in this country, in our Sabbath usages. To particularize further would 
be unnecessary, and might be supposed invidious. 

II. Sabbath Command moral. — We proceed now to the attempt 
to give a full but summary statement of the grounds upon which Pres- 
byterians assert the doctrine of a Christian Sabbath as it is set forth in 
their Confession. And first ■: it is most obvious that if the Sabbath law 
contained in the decalogue is "positive, moral and perpetual command- 
ment, binding all men, in all ages," and not ceremonial and positive, 
like the Jewish laws of meats, new moons and sacrifices, it cannot have 
passed away along with the other temporary shadows of Judaism. If 
it was not introduced by the Levitical economy for the first time, but 
was in force before, and if it was binding not on Jews only, but on all 
men, then the abrogation of that economy cannot have abrogated that 
which it did not institute. The Apostle Paul justifies us here, by using 
an argument exactly parallel in a similar case. " The covenant that 
was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law which was four hundred 
and thirty years after cannot disannul." Gal.iii:17. Upon the ques- 
tion whether the fourth commandment was of Mosaic origin, or earlier, 
the fathers were divided : and this fact is another amoag the many 
proofs of their slender acquaintance with the Hebrew literature and" 
antiquities. 

That it is a positive, moral, and perpetual cummand, we argue from 
the facts that there is a reason in the nature of things, making such an 
institution necessary to man's religious interests ; and that this neces- 
sity is substantially the same in all ages and nations. That it is man's 
duty to worship God, none will dispute. Nor will it be denied that 
this worship sbould be in part social ; because man is a being of social 
affections, and subject to social obligations ; and because one of the 
great ends of worship is the display of the Divine glory before our fel- 
low-creatures. Social worship cannot be conducted without the ap- 
pointment of a stated day ; and what more reasonable than that the Di- 
vine authority, who is the object of this worship, should meet this ne- 
cessity, by Himself fixing the day for all mankind 1 And even for the 
cultivation of our individual devotion, a periodical season is absolutely 
necessary to creatures of habit and of finite capacities, like us. What 
is not regularly done will soon be omitted; for periodical recurrence is 
the very foundation of habit. Unless these spiritual thoughts and ex- 
ercises were attached to some certain season, they would inevitably be 
pushed out of the minds of carnal and sensuous beings like man, by the 
cares of this world. Now, when it is our duty to perform a certain 
work, it is also our duty to employ all the necessary means for it. The 
question, whether the Sabbath command is moral or positive, seems, 
therefore, to admit of a very simple solution. Whether one day in six, 
or one in eight, might not have seemed to the Divine wisdom admissible 
for this purpose; or which day of the seveu, the first or last, should be 
consecrated to it, or what should be the particular external ceremonies 
for its observance ; all these things, we freely admit, are of merely 
positive institution, and may be changed by the Divine Legislator. But 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 263 

that man shall observe some stated, recurring period of religious wor- 
ship, is as much a dictate of the natural reason and conscience, as im- 
mediate a result of the natural relations of man to God, as that man 
shall worship his God at all. And no reason can be shown why this 
original moral obligation was more or less stringent upon the Israelites 
of the Mosaic period, than on men before or since them. If the ground 
of the Sabbath institution, in the moral relations existing by nature, is 
universal and perpetual, is it not reasonable to expect the precent to 
be so also 1 

Sabbath Command Primeval. — We argue further, that the enact- 
ment of the Sabbath-law does not date from Moses, but was coeval with 
the human race. It is one of the two first institutions of paradise. 
The sanctification of the seventh day took place from the very end of 
the week of creation. (Gen. ii : 3.) For whose observance was the 
day, then, consecrated or set apart, if not for man's 1 Not for God's ; 
because the glorious paradox is forever true of Him, that His ineffable 
quiet is as perpetual as His ever-active providence. Not surely for the 
angel's? but for Adam's. Doubtless, Eden witnessed the sacred rest of 
him and his consort from 1 

" The toil 

Of their sweet gardening labor, which sufficed 

To recommend cool zephyr, and made ease 

More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite 

More grateful." 

And from that time downward, we have indications, brief indeed, but 
as numerous as we should expect in the brief record of Genesis and 
Exodus, and sufficient to show that the Sabbath continued to be an insti- 
tution of the patriarchal religion. A slight probable evidence of this 
may even be found in the fact, that seven has ever been a sacred and 
symbolical number, among Patriarchs, Israelites, and Pagans. In 
Genesis we read of the "seven clean beasts," the "seven well-favored," 
and "seven lean kine," the "seven ears of corn, rank and good." Now 
there is no natural phenomenon to suggest the number; for no noted 
heavenly body, or natural element, revolves precisely in seven hours, 
days, weeks, or months. Whence the peculiar idea everywhere attached 
to the number, if not from the institution of a week for our first pa- 
rents 1 But to proceed to more solid facts : It is at least probable that 
the "end of days," (Gen. iv : 3), rendered in our version, "process of 
time," at which Cain and Abel offered their sacrifices, was the end of the 
week, theseventh, or Sabbath-day. In Gen. vii : 10, we find God Him- 
self observing the weekly interval in the preparations for the flood. We 
find another clear hint of the observance of the weekly division of time 
by Noah and his family in their floating prison. (Gen. viii : 10-12.) 
The patriarch twice waited a period of seven days to send out his dove. 
From Gen. xxix : 27, we learn that it was customary among the patri- 
archs of Mesopotamia, in the days of Laban, to continue a wedding fes- 
tival a week; and the very term of service rendered by Jacob for his 
two wives, shows the use made of the number seven as the customary du- 
ration of a contract for domestic servitude. Gen,. 1 : 10, shows us that at 
the time of Jacob's death, a week was also the length of the most honor- 
able funeral exercises. In Exod. xii : 3-20, we find the first institution 
of the passover, when as yet there was no Mosaic institutions. This feast 









264 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

was also appointed to last a week. In Exodus xvi : 22-30, where we 
read the first account of the manna, we find the Sabbath institution al- 
raady in force ; and no candid mind will say that this is the history of 
its first enactment. It is spoken of as a rest with which the people 
ought to have been familiar. But the people had not yet come to Sinai, 
and none of its institutions had been given. Here, then, we have the 
Sabbath's rest enforced on Israel, before the ceremonial law was setup, 
and two weekly variations wrought in the standing miracle of the manna, 
in order to facilitate it. And when at length we come to the formal 
command of the decalogue, it is expressed in terms which clearly indi- 
cate that the Sabbath was an institution already known, of which the 
obligation was now only re-affirmed. 

This proved by Decalogue. — The very fact that this precept found a 
place in the awful "ten words," is of itself strong evidence that it is not 
a positive and ceremonial, but a moral and perpetual statute. Confess- 
edly, there is nothing else ceremonial here. An eminent distinction 
was given to the subjects of these ten commands, by the mode in which 
God delivered them. They were given first of all. They were spoken 
in the hearing of all the people, by God's own voice of thunder, which 
moulded its tremendous sounds into syllables so loud that the whole 
multitude around the distant base of the mount heard them break, 
articulate from the cloud upon its peak. "These words the Lord spake 
unto all your assembly in the mount, oat of the midst of the fire, of the 
cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice ; and he added no 
rno7 , e. ,, (Dent, v: 22.) No other words shared the same distinction. 
And then they were engraven, by God's own agency, on two stone ta- 
bles, whose durability was to represent the perpetual obligation of all 
which was written upon it. How can it be believed that this one cere- 
monial precept has been thrust in here, where all else is of obligation 
as old, and as universal as the race ? This is strengthened also by the 
reflection that the ground first assigned in Genesis, and here repeated 
for its enactment, is in no sense Jewish or national. God's work of 
creation in six days, and His rest the seventh, have just as much rela- 
tion to one tribe of Adam's descendants as to another. Note the con- 
trast : that, in many cases, when ceremonial and Jewish commands are 
given, like the passover, a national or Jewish event is assigned as its 
ground, like the exodus from Egypt. 

Proved by Tradition — The assertion that the Sabbath was coeval 
with the human race, and was intended for the observation of all, re- 
ceives collateral confirmation also from the early traditions concerning 
it, which pervade the first Pagan literature. It can hardly be sup- 
posed that Homer and Hesiod borrowed from the books of Moses, sab- 
batical allusions, which would have been to their hearers unintelligible. 
They must be the remnants of those primeval traditions of patriarchal 
religion, which had been transferred by the descendants of Japheth, to 
the isles of Chittim. The early allusions to a sacred seventh day may 
be sufficiently exhibited by citing a collection of them from Eusebius' 
Preparatio JEvangelica, (L. xiii, Sec. 18), which he quotes from the 
Stromata of Clement of Alexandria. The latter father is represented 
as saying : "That the seventh day is sacred, not the Hebrews only, 
but the Gentiles also acknowledge, according to which the whole uui- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 265 

verse of animals and vegetables revolves." Hesiod, for instance, thus 
says concerning it : 

" The first, the fourth also, and the seventh is a sacred day." (Teron 
hemar. Dierum, line 6. 

And again: "The seventh day once more, the splendid dawn of the 
sun." 

And Homer; "The seventh then arrived, the sacred day." 

Again : "The seventh was sacred." 

"The seventh dawn was at hand, and with this all the series is com- 
pleted." 

And once more : "On the seventh day, we left the stream of Ache- 
ron." 

And thus also writes Callimachus the poet : "It was now the Sabbath 
day : and with this all was accomplished." 

Again : "The seventh day is among the fortunate ; yea, the seven is 
the parent-day." 

Again : "The seventh day is first, and the seventh day is the comple- 
ment." 

And : "All things in the starry sky are found in sevens ; and shine 
in their ordained cycles." 

" And this day, the elegies of Solon also proclaim as more sacred, in 
a wonderful mode." 

Thus far Clement and Eusebius. Josephus, in his last book against 
Apion, affirms that "there could be found no city, either of the Gre- 
cians or Barbarians, who owned not a seventh day's rest from labour." 
This of course is exaggerated. Philo, cotemporary with Josephus, calls 
the Sabbath eorte pandemos. 

Because enforced on foreigners. — We argue once more, that the 
Sabbath never was a Levitical institution, because God commanded its 
observance both by Jews and Gentiles, in the very laws of Moses. "In 
it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy 
man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy Strang er that 
is within thy gates." To see the force of the argument from this fact, 
the reader must contrast the jealous care with which "the stranger,' 7 
the pagan foreigner residing in an Israelitish community, was prohibit- 
ed from all share in their ritual services. No foreigner could partake 
of the passover — it was sacrilege. He was not even permitted to enter 
the court of the temple where the sacrifices were offered, at the peril of 
his life. Now, when the foreigner is commanded to share the Sabbath 
rest, along with the Israelite, does not this prove that rest to be no cere- 
monial, no type, like the passover and the altar, but a universal moral 
institution, designed for Jew and Gentile alike? 

Conclusion. — We have thus established this assertion on an impreg- 
nable basis, because the argument from it is direct and conclusive. If 
the Sabbath command was in full force before Moses, the passing away 
of Moses' law does not remove it. If it always was binding, on grounds 
as general as the human race, on all tribes of mankind, the dissolution 
of God's special covenant with the family of Jacob did not repeal it. 
If its nature is moral and practical, the substitution of the substance 
for the types does not supplant it. The reason that the ceremonial 
laws were temporary was that the necessity for them was temporary. 
They were abrogated because they were no longer needed. But the 



266 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

practical need for a Sabbath is the same in all ages. When it is made 
to appear that this day is the bulwark of practical religion in the world, 
that its proper observance everywhere goes hand in hand with piety 
and the true worship of God ; that where there is no Sabbath there is 
no Christianity, it becomes an impossible supposition that God would 
make the institution temporary. The necessity for the Sabbath has not 
ceased, therefore it is not abrogated. In its nature, as well as its ne- 
cessity, it is a permanent, moral command. All such laws are as inca- 
pable of change as the God in whose character they are founded. Un- 
like mere positive or ceremonial ordinances, the authority of which 
ceases as soon as God sees fit to repeal the command for them, moral 
precepts can never be repealed ; because the purpose to repeal them 
would imply a change in the unchangeable, and a depravation in the 
perfect character of God. 

New Testament does not Abrogate. — 2. We will now proceed, in 
the second place, to consider the passages of the New Testament from 
which the abrogation of the Sabbath obligations has been argued, to- 
gether with some considerations growing out of them. In attempting 
to refute the exposition and arguments of those who advocate the repeal 
of those obligations, we shall not pause to attribute each gloss which we 
reject to its especial author, or load our page with citations of learned 
names. It may be remarked once for all in the outset, that the erro- 
neous expositions of Calvin are far the least objectionable, and, at the 
same time, the most subtle and acute ; and that those of NTeander are in 
full contrast with his in both these respects. 

Matt, xii : 1-8 ; Mark ii : 23-28; Luke vi : 1-5. — The first passage 
is that contained, with some variation, in Matt, xii : 1-8 ; Mark ii : 23- 
28 ; Luke vi : 1-5. The reader, on examining these places in connexion, 
and supplying from the second or third evangelist what is omitted b^ 
the first, will find that our Lord advances five ideas distinguishable from 
each other. His hungry and wearied disciples, passing with Him through 
the fields of ripe corn, had availed themselves of the permission of Deut. 
xxiii : 25, to pluck, rub out, and eat some grains of wheat, as a slight 
refreshment. The Pharisees seize the occasion to cavil that He had 
thus permitted them to break the Sabbath law, by engaging in the pre- 
paration of their food in sacred time ; objecting thus against the trivial 
task of rubbing out, and winnowing from the chaff a few heads of wheat 
as they walked along. Our Saviour defends them and Himself by say- 
ing, in the first place, that the necessity created by their hunger justi- 
fied the departure from the letter of the law, as did David's necessity, 
when fleeing for his life he employed the shew-bread (and innocently) 
to relieve his hunger ; second, that the example of the priests, who per- 
formed necessary manual labour without blame about the temple on the 
Sabbath, justified what His disciples had done ; third, that God prefer- 
red the compliance with the spirit of His law, which enjoins humanity 
and mercy, over a mere compliance with its outward rites ; for, in the 
fourth place God's design in instituting the Sabbath had been purely 
a humane one, seeing He had intended it, not as a burdensome ceremo- 
nial to gall the necks of men to no benevolent purpose, but as a means 
of promoting the true welfare of the human race; and last, that He 
Himself, as the Messiah, was the Divine and Supreme authority in 
maintaining the Sabbath law, as well as all others — so that it waa 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 267 

enough for Him to pronounce that His disciples had made no infraction 
of it. 

Our Saviour here defines Jewish Sabbath. — The first general 
view presented hereupon by the anti-Sabbatarians is, that Christ here, 
for the first time, introduces the freer, more lenient law of the new dis- 
pensation, by His Messianic authority, as a substitute for the stricter 
Mosaic law. The simple and short answer is, that it is the Sabbath as 
it ought to be observed by Jews, under tlie Mosaic laws, which our Saviour 
is here expounding. The new dispensation had not yet come ; and was 
not to begin till Pentecost. After all this discussion, Christ complied 
with all the requisitions of the Levitical institutions up to His death. 
If, then, any thing is relaxed, it is the Mosaic Sabbath, as Jews should 
keep it, which is the subject of the alteration. But we wish the reader 
to bear in mind, as a point important here and hereafter, that our Saviour 
does not claim any relaxation at all for His disciples. The whole drift 
of His argument is to show that when the Mosaic law of the Sabbath 
is properly understood, (as Jews should practice it,) His disciples have 
not broken it at all. They have complied with it; and need no lower- 
ing of its sense in order to escape its condemnation. Bearing this in 
mind, we proceed to the second erroneous inference. This is, that our 
Saviour illustrates and expounds the Sabbath law by two cases of other 
laws merely ceremonial, the disposition of the old shew-bread and the 
Sabbath sacrifices. Hence the inference, that' the Sabbath also is but 
a ceremonial law. But to those who will notice how entirely the Jewish 
Scriptures ignore, in their practical recitals and discussions of religious 
duties, the distinction which we make between the "moral" and the 
''positive," this inference will be seen to be utterly worthless. The 
Jewish mind never paused to express the distinction, in its practical 
views of duty. See how Moses jumbles together, in Exodus, prohibi- 
tions against idolatry, or hewing the stones of which the altar was made • 
against eating flesh torn of beasts in the field, and bearing false witness. 
See how Ezekiel (ch. xviii.) coujoins eating upon the mountains and 
taking usury on a loan, with idolatry and oppression, in his descriptions 
of the sins of his cotemporaries. But again : It has been admitted 
that the external and formal details of Sabbath observance may be of 
only positive obligation, while the obligation to keep religiously a stated 
season is moral. It does not, then, at all imply that the substantial 
observance of such a stated day is not of moral and perpetual obliga- 
tion, because any of those details concerning the labours of necessity 
or mercy which are wholly compatible with such observance, are illus- 
trated by comparison with other ceremonial precepts. It is argued 
again, that "our Saviour, in His third point, implies that Sabbath 
observance is but ceremonial, while the duty of mercy is of moral 
obligation, when He indicates that, if the two clash, the Sabbath obser- 
vance is to give way. The positive gives way to the moral." The force 
of this is entirely removed by recalling the fact that it is not a failure 
of Sabbath observance, which He excuses by the argument that the 
positive should give place to the moral ; but it is an incidental labour 
of necessity wholly compatible with Sabbath observance. There had 
been no failure. Nor is it true that when we are commanded to let on e 
given duty give place to the higher demands of another, the former is 
therefore, only positive, while the latter is moral. There is a natural' 



268 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

moral, and perpetual obligation to worship God ; and yet it might be 
our duty to suspend any act of worship, time and again, to almost any 
number, in order to meet the demands of urgent cases of necessity call- 
ing for our compassion. The wise man expresses precisely the sense of 
our Saviour's argument when he says : " To do justice and judgment 
is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice." (Prov. xxi : 3.) And 
the meaning is, that the formal acts of religious worship, though in 
general demanded by nature and reason, are less important in God's 
eyes than the direct acts which express the true spirit of holiness in 
which religion consists. " Sacrifice," both here, and in our Saviour's 
citation from Samuel, represents the whole general idea of outward re- 
ligious worship. It is not because (i sacrifice " is merely ceremonial, 
that it is postponed in importance, to mercy and justice, but because it 
is external, and may be merely formal. Heligious worship, here in- 
tended by the more special term " sacrifice," is surely not a duty 
merely ceremonial and positive in its obligation, though external. Our 
Saviour, then, does not imply that the Sabbath is an institution merely 
ceremonial, by comparing it to sacrifice. 

The perverted gloss of the fourth idea : "The Sabbath is made for 
man," is almost too shallow to need exposure. It has been used as 
though it sanctioned the notion, that man was not intended to be 
cramped by the Sabbath, but, on the contrary, it was intended to yield 
to his convenience and gratification. But since the object of the Sabbath 
is here stated to be a humane one, namely, the promotion of man's true 
welfare,|it must be settled what that true welfare is, and how it may be 
best promoted, before we are authorized to conclude that we may do 
what we please with the holy-day. If it should appear that man's true 
welfare imperatively demands a Sabbath-day, strictly observed and 
fenced in with Divine authority, the humanity of the Divine motive in 
giving a Sabbath would argue any thing else than the license inferred 
from it. 

Christ does not Remit. — The concluding words of the passage, in 
Matthew, have suggested an argument which is at least more plausible. 
Calvin paraphrases tbem thus : " The Son of man, agreeably to His au- 
thority, is able to relax the Sabbath-day just as the other legal cere- 
monies" And just before : " Here He saith that power is given to 
Him to release His people from the necessity of observing the Sabbath." 
The inference is obvious, that if this is His scope in these words, then 
the Sabbath must be admitted by us to be only a ceremonial institu- 
tion ; for we have ourselves argued that moral laws are founded on the 
unchangeable nature of God himself, and will never be changed, be- 
cause God cannot change. But this is clearly a mistaken exposition. 
It may be noted that the conjunction which is rendered by Calvin and 
the English version, "the Son of man is. Lord even (or also) of the Sab- 
bath-day," is unanimously rejected by modern editors of the text. 
Calvin, of course, makes this conjunction regard the ceremonials just 
mentioned : " The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath also," (as well as 
of matters of shew-bread and sacrifice). But we should almost cer- 
tainly read the clause without the conjunction : "If ye had known what 
this means, 'I prefer mercy rather than sacrifice,' ye would not have 
condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." 
What force shall we assign to the illative 'for,' wholly neglected by 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 269 

Calvin 1 There is no reasonable explanation of it, but that which 
makes it introduce the ground on which the innocence of the disciples 
is asserted. " These men, blamed by you, are innocent ; it is enough 
that I defend them : for Jam Lord of the Sabbath. This law is my 
law. Mine is the authority which enacts it, and if am satisfied, that 
itself is innocence in my subjects." But this is comparatively unim- 
portant. The evident reason which shows Calvin's paraphrase to be 
enth-ely a misconception, is this : As we have said, the whole drift of 
our Saviour's argument is not to excuse his disciples, but to defend 
them. He does not claim that the Sabbath law, as enacted for Jews, 
must needs be relaxed, in order to admit the conduct of the disciples ; 
but that this law justified their conduct. He concludes his defence by 
telling their accusers, " you have condemned the innocent." Now, to 
represent Him as shielding them by asserting a right in Himself to re- 
lax the Sabbath law for them, makes Him adopt in the end a ground 
of defence contradictory to the former. The last argument would stul- 
tify ail the previous one. The logical absurdity would be exactly of 
the same kind with that contained in the trite story of the school-boy, 
who, when charged with striking his school-mate, answered : " I did not 
strike him at all ; but if I did, he struck me first." And, as a question 
of fact, is it true that Christ did, at this time, exercise His diviae au- 
thority to relax any Mosaic institution in favour of His disciples'? Is 
it not notorious, on the contrary, that He taught them to give an ex- 
emplary compliance in every respect, until the time was fully come af- 
ter His resurrection 1 

But to conclude. It is most obvious that, whatever is our exposition 
of the particular parts, our Saviour's drift is to unfold the true nature 
of the Mosaic Sabbath, as then obligatory on Jews still obedient to 
the ceremonial law, as He admitted Himself and His disciples to be ; 
and not the nature of the Christian Sabbath. The latter was not to be 
introduced until many months after, as our opponents themselves ad- 
mit. And this short view is a sufficient refutation in itself. 

Is Jewish Strictness Still Required? — It may be as well to no- 
tice here a supsosed difficulty attending our argument. It is said : "If 
you deny that Christ promises any relaxation of the stringency of the 
Levitical Sabbath, as of a ceremonial yoke, then you ought in consis- 
tency to exact of Christians now as punctilous an observance as was 
demanded of the old Jews, in every respect. You should refuse to 
make a fire in your dwellings on the Sabbath. You should seek to re- 
enact the terrible law of Numb, xvi, which punished a wretch with 
death for gathering a few sticks.'" 

This is only skilful sophistry. We have not asserted that all the de- 
tails of the Sabbath laws, in the books of Moses, were of perpetual mo- 
ral obligation. We have not denied that some of them were ceremo- 
nial. The two instances mentioned, which are the only plausible, ones 
which can be presented against us, are not taken from the decalogue, 
but from subsequent parts of the ceremonial books. We expressly 
contrasted the Sabbath precept as it stands in the "ten words" with all 
the rest, with reference to its perpetual, moral nature. The precept 
there contains only two points — rest from secular labour, and the sanc- 
tification of the day, which means in our view its appropriation to sa- 
cred services. The matter which is of perpetual moral obligation in 



270 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the Sabbath law, is only this, that a finite, sensuous, and social being 
like man, shall have some periodical season statedly consecrated to re- 
ligious services, (such season as (rod shall see fit to appoint.) And all 
matters of detail and form which do not clash with this great end, are 
matters of mere positive enactment, which may be changed or repealed 
by Him who enacted them. But we can present several very consistent 
and sufficient reasons why the ceremonial details added to the great 
moral law of the decalogue, by the subsequent and ritual part of the 
Lbvitical legislation, should be more stringent and enforced by heavier 
penalties than among us. First: the Sabbath became to the Israelite 
not only a religious institution of moral obligation, but a type. It took 
rank with his new-moon, and his passover. Of this, more hereafter. 
But the very nature and design of a symbolical ritual demand that it 
shall be observed with technical accuracy. Next, the government was 
a theocracy, and no line whatever separated the secular and sacred 
statutes from each other. Hence, it is natural that offences should de- 
serve very different penalties under such a government, and especially 
an offence aimed so especially against the Divine Chief Magistrate, as 
Sabbath labour. Third : The Hebrews' houses had no hearths, nor 
chimneys, except for cooking ; so that in that warm climate a prohibi- 
tion to light fire on the Sabbath is exactly equivalent to a prohibition 
to cook on the holy-day. Even if this prohibition were a part of the 
decalogue, it would be a ridiculous sacrifice of its spirit to its letter, 
to compel us, in our wintry climate, to forego the fire which is hourly 
necessary to health and comfort. But as the prohibition signifies in 
its spirit, we freely admit that with us, as with the Jews, all culinary 
labours should be intermitted, except such as are demanded by neces- 
sity and mercy, or by the different nature of a part of the food on 
which civilized nations now subsist. For us to allow ourselves further 
license would be to palter with that which we have so carefully pointed 
out as the essential and perpetual substance of the Sabbath law — the 
cessation of labour, and the appropriation to religious pursuits of one 
day (not one fragment of a day) in seven. When the Confession of 
Faith says that we are commanded to rest "all the day" from our own 
employments and amusements, and to " take up the whole time " in 
religious exercises, it only assumes that "a day" means, in the deca- 
logue, a day. 

The second group of passages which are used against our theory of 
Sabbath obligation are, Bom. xiv : 5-6 ; Gal. iv : 9-11 ; Col. ii : 16-17. 
To save the reader trouble, we will copy them : 

Bom. xiv : 5, 6 ; Gal. iv : 9-11 ; Col. ii : 16, 17. — "One man esteem- 
eth one day above another ; another esteemeth every day alike. Let 
every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the 
day, regardeth it unto the Lord : and he that regardeth not the day, to 
the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eatet.h, eateth to the Lord, 
for he giveth God thanks ; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eat- 
eth not, and giveth God thanks." 

"But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of 
God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto 
ye desire again to be in bondage 1 Ye observe days, and months, and 
times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you 
labour in vain." 



OF LECTURES IK THEOLOGY. 271 

"Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or iu drink, or in respect 
of an holy-day, or of the new-moon, or of the Sabbath-days: Which 
are a shadow of things to come ; but the body is of Christ." 

The facts in which all are agreed, which explain the Apostle's mean- 
ing in these passages, are these: After the establishment of the new 
dispensation, the Christians converted from among the Jews had gene- 
rally combined the practice of Judaism with the forms of Christianity. 
They observed the Lord's day, baptism, and the Lord's supper ; but 
they also continued to keep the seventh day, the passover, and circum- 
cision. At first it was proposed by them to enforce this double system 
on all Gentile Christians ; but this project was rebuked by the meeting 
of apostles and elders at Jerusalem, recorded in Acts xv. A large 
part, however, of the Jewish Christians, out of whom ultimately grew 
the Ebionite sect, continued to observe the forms of both dispensations; 
and restless spirits among the mixed churches of Jewish and Gentile 
converts planted by Paul, continued to attempt their enforcement on 
Gentiles also ; some of them conjoining with this Ebionite theory the 
graver heresy of a justification by ritual observances. Thus, at this 
day, this spectacle was exhibited. In the mixed churches of Asia Mi- 
nor and the West, some brethren went to the synagogue on Saturday, 
and to the church-meeting on Sunday, keeping both days religiously ; 
while some kept only Sunday. Some felt bound to keep all the Jewish 
festivals and fasts, while others paid them no regard. And those who 
had not Christian light to apprehend these Jewish observances as non- 
essentials, found their consciences grievously burdened or offended by 
the diversity. It was to quiet this trouble that the apostle wrote these 
passages. Thus far we agree. 

We, however, further assert, that by the beggarly elements of "days," 
"months," "times," "years," "holy-days," "new-moons," "Sabbath- 
days," the apostle means Jewish festivals, and those alone. The Chris- 
tian's festipal, Sunday, is not here in question; because about the ob- 
servance of this there was no dispute nor diversity in the Christian 
churches. Jewish and Gentile Christians alike consented universally 
in its sanctification. When Paul asserts that the regarding of a day, 
or the not regarding it, is a non-essential, like the eating or not eating 
of meats, the natural and fair interpretation is, that he means those 
days which were in debate, and no others. When he implies that some 
innocently "regarded every day alike," we should understand, every 
one of those days which were subjects of diversity —not the Christians' 
Sunday, about which there was no dispute. 

Anti-Sabatarian View — Reply. — But the other party give to Paul's 
words a far more sweeping sense. They suppose him to assert ( that 
the new dispensation has detached the service of God from all connexion 
with stated seasons whatever ; so that in its view, all days, Sabbath or 
Sunday, passover or easter, should be alike to the Christian spirit. He 
who ceased to observe the Jewish days, in order to transfer his sabbat- 
ical observances, his stated devotions and special religious rest to the 
Christian clays, was still in substance a Judaizer. He was retaining 
the Jewish bondage of spirit under a new form. The true liberty 
which Paul would teach was this : To regard no day whatever as move 
related to the Christian consciousness than any other day, and to make 
every day a rest from sin, pervading all with a sacred spirit by perform- 



272 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

ing all its labours to the glory of God. This is the true, thorough, and 
high ground, which the apostle called them to occupy with him. But 
opposition to Judaism, and reverence for Christ in His resurrection had 
led the Christians to hold their public meetings on Sunday instead of 
Saturday; and some little allowance of set days (including Easter and 
Whitsuntide) had been granted to the weakness of the Christian life, 
which, in the common average of Christians, had not yet risen to that 
level which would enable them, like Paul, to make every day equally 
a Lord's day. This concession had been possibly established with Paul's 
connivance, certainly very early in the history of the Church ; and, on 
the whole, was a very convenient and useful human appointment.' See 
this view in Neander, Hist., vol. I, sec. 3, sec. IE, 3 ; and Planting and 
Training, vol. I, bk. 3, ch. v, sec. 2. The chief argument by which he 
supports his view is a perversion of the figurative and glowing language 
found in the few and not very perspicuous writings of the Christians 
immediately next to the apostles, where they speak affectionately of the 
Christian's whole life as belonging to God by the purchase of redemp- 
tion, and of the duties of every day as an oblation to His honour. The 
thankful spirit of the new dispensation, urges Neander, unlike the 
Jewish, felt itself constrained by gratitude for redemption to consecrate 
its whole life to God. Whatever the Christian's occupation, whether 
secular or religious, all was alike done to the glory of God. Hence, 
all was consecrated ; every day was a holy day, for the whole life was 
holy; every Christian was a perpetual priest. Hence, there was no 
room for the idea of a Sabbath at all. Strange that the learrfed and 
amiable antiquary should have forgotten that all this was just as true 
of pious Hebrews before, as of Christians after Christ — of Isaiah as of 
Paul. Isaiah, if redeemed at all, was redeemed by the same blood with 
Paul, owed substantially the same debt of gratitude, and would feel, as 
a true saint, the same self-consecration. The spirit of the precept, "Do 
all to the glory of God," actuates the pious Israelite exactly as it did 
the pious Christian. Let the reader compare Deut, vi : 4, 5, with Matt. 
xxii : 37, so that the refined argument of the learned German proves 
that there ought to be no room for a sabbatical distinction of days 
under the old dispensation, just as under the new. Unluckily, the ex- 
plicit language of the books of Moses is rather damaging to the validity 
of the inference. 

Let us also notice, just here, the consequences of the ground on 
which Neander places those festival observances of the early Christians 
on stated days, of which he could not dispute the occurrence. He re- 
presents that Paul invited and exhorted them to ascend at once to his 
high, spiritual ground, discarding all reference to stated days whatever, 
and making the whole life a Sabbath. But the average standard of 
spirituality was not yet high enough to make this practicable for all ; 
and so the partial observance of stated days, Sundays, Easter, and 
Whitsuntide, was allowed by a sort of ecclesiastical precedent. Now, 
we remark, first, that this represents the Spirit of Inspiration as set- 
ting up an impracticable standard. If the average of spirituality was 
not high enough in the days of inspiration to make it practicable 
actually to discard all relation of the acts of Christian devotion to 
stated days, may we rationally expect that it will ever be high enough 
while Christians are in the flesh? In other words: Is there not an im- 



Of lectures in theoloqy. 273 

plied admission here, that there is an innate necessity in the character 
of human beings that they should have a sabbatical institution of some 
sort? The assertion of such an universal necessity is one of the cor- 
ner-stones of our argument. Second : The idea reveals an unworthy 
and false conception of Paul's inspiration. Paul, forsooth, proposes a 
certain mode and standard of Christian devotion, but it is found ne- 
cessary in practice to correct it by the wiser guidance of Church prece- 
dent, almost under Paul's nose ! This representation of the whole 
matter could never have proceeded from any other than the transcen- 
dental theory of inspiration, which regards it as merely a higher mode 
of the natural and normal exercise of the man's own consciousness, at a 
more exalted level than that attained by other men. Let those Amer- 
ican Christians who indulge their prurient literary vanity by bespat- 
tering Neander with their unintelligent praise, remember that this is 
the conception of inspiration to which they commit themselves in com- 
mending him. 

Is the Sabbath a Type? — In our remaining discussion of the pas- 
sages cited from the epistles, we may confine our remarks to Col. ii : 
16-17. For it contains all the apparent difficulties for the Sabbatarian, 
and all the supposed arguments for his opponent, in the strongest form. 
The point made by Calvin upon the words, " Sabbath-days, .... are 
a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ," is far the most 
plausible, and indeed the only one of serious difficulty. It is in sub- 
stance this : That if it be admitted that the Lord's day was never in- 
oluded by the earlier Christians in the term Sabbata — and the apostle 
is here condemning the Jewish holy-days only — -still the fact will re- 
main, that the Jewish Sabbath was a shadow. That is, it was a typical, 
and not a perpetual moral institution, so that it must go by the board 
along with all the other types, after the substance comes, unless some 
positive New Testament precept re-enact it. But there is no such pre- 
cept. To this we answer, that the Sabbath was to the Jews both a 
perpetual, moral institution, and a type. That it was the former, we 
have proved in the first general branch of our discussion. It was as 
old as the race of man, was given to all the race, was given upon an 
assigned motive of universal application, and to satisfy a necessity com- 
mon to the whole race, was founded on man's natural relations to his 
Maker, was observed before the typical dispensation came among all 
tribes, was re-enacted in the decalogue where all the precepts are per- 
petual, and was enjoined on foreigners as well as Jews in the Holy 
Land : while from allotypes foreigners were expressly excluded. That 
it was to the Jews also a type, we admit. Like the new-moons, it was 
marked by an additional number of sacrifices. It was to the Israelites 
a memorial of their exodus from Egypt, and their covenant of obedience 
to God. Deut. v: 15, Exod. xxxi : 13, Ezek. xx : 12. It was for a 
time, at least, a foreshadowing of the rest of Canaan. Hebr. iv : 4-1 1. 
It was to them, as it is to us, a shadow of the rest in heaven. Hebr. 
iv : 9. Calvin adds, (Bk. II. Enstitutes, Ch. 8, Sec. 29) that its most 
important typical use was to represent the cessation of the efforts of 
self-righteousness in us, that we may repose in the justifying and sanc- 
tifying grace of Christ. For this his proofs seem to us very slender. 
When the Epistle to the Colossians says that Sabbaths, along with holy 
days and new-moons, are a shadow, it seems to us much the most simple 



274 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

explanation to say that it is the sacrificial aspect of those days, or (to 
employ other words) their use as especial days of sacrifice, in which 
they together constituted a shadow. They were a shadow in this : that 
the sacrifices, which constituted so prominent a part of their Levitical 
observance, pointed to Christ the body. This is exactly accordant with 
the whole tenour of the Epistles. 

The seventh day had been, then, to the Jews, both a moral institu- 
tion and a ritual type. In its latter use, the comiDg of Christ had of 
course abrogated it. In its former use, its whole duties and obligations 
had lately been transferred to the Lord's day. So that the seventh day, 
as distinguished from 'Sunday, along with the new-moons, was now noth- 
ing but a type, and that an effete one. In this aspect, the apostle might 
well argue that its observance then indicated a Jadaizing tendency. 

The "Days" excluded are Jewish. — We fortify our position farther 
byre-asserting that the fair exposition of all these passages should lead 
us to understand by the phrases, " days," "times," "holy-days," only 
those days or times which were then subjects of diversity among the 
Christians to whom the apostle was writing. When he implies that 
some innocently " regarded every day alike," we ought in fairness to 
understand by " every day," each of those days which were then in 
dispute. But we know historically that there was no diversity among 
these Christians concerning the observance of the Lord's day. All 
practised it. If we uncritically persist in taking the phrase "every 
day" in a sense absolutely universal, we shall place the teachings and 
usages of the apostle in a self-contradictory light. We make him tell 
his converts that the Lord's day may be regarded as just like any other 
day; when we know that, in fact, neither the apostle nor any of his 
converts regarded it so. They all observed it as a religious festival, 
and as we shall show, with the clear sanction of inspired example. 
Again: it must be distinctly remembered that the word Sabbath was 
never applied, in New Testament language, to the Lord's day, but was 
always used for the seventh day, and other Jewish festivals, as distin- 
guished from the Christian's Sunday. We have the authority of Suidas, 
Theophylact and Csesarius, and Levit. xxiii : 24, that the " Jews called 
any of their stated religious festivals Sabbaton. We might then argue, 
perhaps, that there is no evidence that the seventh day is intended in 
this place of Colossians at all ; but only the Jewish feasts. But we 
waive this, as too near to special pleading. With far more confidence 
we argue, that since all parties have claimed the parellelism of three 
passages in Romans, Galatians and Colossians, as to their occasion and 
doctrine, we are entitled to assume that the passage in Colossians, the 
most explicit of the three, is to be taken as explicative of the other two. 
And we assert that, according to well known usage of the word Sabbata 
at that time, the Sundays were <teftnitely excluded from the apostle's 
assertion. When he says here, " holy-days, new-moons, and Sabbath- 
days," he explicitly excludes the Lord's days. We are entitled to 
assume, therefore, that they are excluded when he says in the parellel 
passage of Romans, "every day," and in Galatians, '^days, and months, 
and times, and years." That the Lord's days were sacred was not in 
debate ; this is set aside as a matter known to all, consented unto by 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 275 

all. It is the Jewish holy-days, from the observance of which the 
Christian conscience is exempted. 

Without Sabbath, the New Dispensation would be the Worse. 
Let us recur to that view of the necessity of a Sabbatical institution in 
some form. It is not a temporary orceremonial need, but one founded 
on man's very nature and relations to his God. If there is no stated 
sacred day, there will be no religion. Now shall we so interpret the 
apostle's words as to leave the New Testament church no Sabbath at 
all in any shape? After the experience of all ages had shown that a 
Sabbath rest was the natural and necessary means essential to religious 
welfare, was the New Testament church stripped more bare, left more 
poor than all preceding dispensations ? Paradise had enjoyed its Sab- 
bath, though needing it less. The patriarchal saints enjoyed it. Abra- 
ham enjoyed it. Israel, under the burdensome tutelage of the law, 
enjoyed it. But now that the last, the fullest, the most gracious and 
blessed dispensation of all has come, this one of the two institutions of 
Eden is taken away ! We cannot accept such an exposition of the apos- 
tle's meaning. We must conclude that when he seems to release his 
converts from all obligations of days, the Lord's day is tacitly under- 
stood as reserved, as not here in question ; because about this all par- 
ties had been agreed. 

Neander Inconsistent. — Let us notice here how inconsistent and 
un-protestant is Neander's position. He asserts that it is inconsistent 
with the free and spiritual nature of Christianity that God should give 
any stated day, by His express ordinance, a closer relation to the Chris- 
tian consciousness than any other day. Is it not equally inconsistent 
that He should give any particular place, and forms of worship a pecu- 
liar relation to the Christian consciousness? But, under the New Tes- 
tament, He has done this very thing ; commanding us to worship in 
concert at the place or building appropriated by our brethren for this 
purpose, and to do so with prayers, hymns, and the sacraments. It is 
admitted again, that after all the Church has found that practically 
there is a necessity, founded in man's universal nature and relations to 
God, which compels us to take some stated day into a peculiar relation 
to the Christian consciousness, to some extent at least. Sunday is a 
Christian festival, and a memorial of the resurrection — says the Lu- 
theran — made so with sufficient validity, by a Church precedent. But 
is it not far more consistent with Protestantism, which teaches that 
nothing but God's revealed will is its religion, to find this validity, if 
it finds it at all, in His law, rather than a church tradition? We seek 
an express precept for the mode of our worship, the number and forms 
of our sacraments ; and teach that any element of service which is not 
thus enjoined, is will-worship. Should we not find a Divine precept for 
the season of our worship also ? And if we find none, does not Protest- 
ant consistency require us to say that Sunday, not being enjoined by 
express Divine command, is literally no more to Christians than any 
other day, which they agree, for conscience' sake, to appoint for a week- 
day, prayer-meeting, or Bible Society address, and may be changed with 
as little scruple ? As to the motive that it is commemorative of Christ's 
resurrection, why will not one Sunday a year answer just as well for 
this, as one Good Friday a year does to commemorate the passover of 
our Lord I The Lutheran or Episcopalian, in enforcing a partial observ* 



276 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

ance of Sunday, is indeed consistent with himself; for he believes that 
ecclesiastical authority is sufficient to do this, if not contrary to the 
Scriptures ■ but he is not consistent with the Word of God, which teaches, 
as we understand it, that nothing is to be enjoined as a stated part of 
His worship, except what he has expressly enjoined. "The Bible alone 
is the religion of Protestants." 

Lord's day is Christian Sabbath. — 3. "We shall now, in the third 
branch of our discussion, attempt to show the ground on which we as- 
sert that the Sabbath, "from the resurrection of Christ, was changed 
into the first day of tbe week, which in Scripture is called the Lord's 
day, and is to be continued to the end of the world as the Christian 
Sabbath." This proof is chiefly historical, and divides itself into two 
branches; first, that drawn from the inspired history of the New Testa- 
ment; and second, that found in the authentic but uninspired testimony 
of primitive Christians. The latter, which might have been thought to 
demand a place in our review of the history of Sabbath opinions has 
been reserved for this place, because it forms an interesting part of our 
ground of argument. But let us here say, once for all, that we invoke 
this patriotic testimony, in no popish or prelatic spirit of dependence on 
it. In our view, all the uninspired church testimony in the world, how- 
ever venerable, would never make it our duty to keep Sunday as a Sab- 
bath. We use these fathers simply as historical witnesses ; and their 
evidence derives its whole value in our eyes from its relevancy to this 
point ; whether or not the apostles left a custom of observing Sunday, in- 
stead of the Sabbaths established by their example in the Churches. 
When the fathers say: "We as fathers, as bishops, as Church rulers, 
tell you to observe Sunday ;" we reject the warrant as nothing worth. 
But if they are able to say: "We, as honest and well informed wit- 
nesses, tell you that the apostolic age left us the example and warrant for 
observing Sunday," we accept the testimony as of some value. Pre- 
latists are fond of shutting their eyes to this plain distinction, in order 
to claim that we must either surrender all the early historic light of 
uninspired literature, or else adopt their semi-popish theory of tradi- 
tion. We trust the distinction is so stated here, once for all, that all 
will see it, (except those who do not wish to see it), and will bear it in 
mind. 

Inferred from Abrogation op Seventh Day. — Our first, or pre- 
liminary argument for the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath, is that 
implied in the second Scripture reference subjoined by our Confession 
to the sentence we have just quoted from it. If we have been success- 
ful in proving that the Sabbath is a perpetual institution, the evidence 
will appear perfect. The perpetaul law of the decalogue has com- 
manded all men, in all time, to keep a Sabbath-day; and "till heaven 
and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall not pass from the law of God 
till all be fulfilled." The Apostle, in Col. ii : 16, 17, clearly tells us 
that the seventh day is no longer our Sabbath. What day, then, is it ? 
Some day must have been substituted ; and what one so likely to be 
the true substitute as the Lord's day 1 The law is not repealed ; it 
cannot be. But Paul has shown that it is changed. To what day is the 
Sabbath changed, if not to the first^? No other day in the week has a 
shadow of a claim. It must be this, or none ; but it cannot be none : 
therefore it must be this. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 277 

Proved bv Precedent. — The other main argument consists in the 
fact that disciples, inspired apostles, and their Christian associates, did 
observe the Lord's day as a religious festival. And this fact must be 
viewed, to see its full force, in connexion with the first argument. When 
we find them at once beginning, and uniformly continuing the observ- 
ance of the Lord's day, while they avow that they are no longer bound 
to observe the seventh day, and when we couple with this the knowl- 
edge of the truth that they, like all the rest of the world, were still 
commanded by God to keep His Sabbath, we see that the inference is 
overwhelming, that the authority by which they observed the Lord's 
day was from God, although they do not say so. That which is inferred 
from Scripture, " by good and necessary consequence," is valid ; as well 
as that which is set down expressly in it." Examination shows us, then, 
that the disciples commenced the observance of the Lord's day by so- 
cial worship the very next week after the resurrection. From John 
xx : 19, we learn that the very day of the resurrection, at evening, the 
disciples were assembled with closed doors, with the exception of 
Thomas Didymus. Can we doubt that they had met for worship 1 In 
chap, v : 26, we learn : "And after eight days again His disciples were 
within, and Thomas with them : then came Jesus, the doors being shut, 
and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you." None will doubt 
but that this was also a meeting for worship, and the phraseology im- 
plies that it was their second meeting. In Jewish language, and esti- 
mates of time, the days at which the counts begin and end are always 
included in the counts; so that "after eight days," here indisputably 
means just a full week. Let the reader compare, for instance, Leviti- 
cus xiii : 4, with xiv : 10. "The priest shall shut up him that hath the 
plague seven days." " And on the eighth day he shall take two he 
lambs without blemish," &c. So the new-born child must be circum- 
cised the eighth ; but it is well known that the number eight is made 
up by counting the day of the birth and the day of the circumcision. 
A full week from the disciples' first meeting brings us again to the first 
day of the week. Until Pentecost we are left uninformed whether they 
continued to observe the first day, but the presumption is wholly that 
they did. 

Pentecost was on First Day. — By consulting Leviticus xxiii: 15- 
16 ; Deut. xvi : 9, you will see that the day of Pentecost was fixed in 
this way. On the morrow after that Sabbath (seventh day) which was 
included within the passover week, a sheaf of the earliest ripe corn was 
cut, brought fresh into the sanctuary, and presented as a thank-offering 
to God. The day of this ceremonial was always the first day of the 
week, or our Sunday, which was, to the Israelites, a working day. 
From this day they were to count seven weeks complete, and the fiftieth 
day was Pentecost day, or the feast of ingathering. Remember that 
the Israelites always included in their count the day from which, and 
the day to which they counted ; and taking his almanac he will find on 
actual experiment, that the fiftieth day will bring him to Sunday again, 
the first day of the week. The gospels tell us most explicitly that the 
year Christ died and rose again, the passover feast began Thursday 
evening ; the day of unleavened bread (in the afternoon of which the 
Saviour died) was our Friday, the day His body lay in the grave, was 
our Saturday, or the Jewish Sabbath, and the day He rose was the first 



27S SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

day, our Sunday. This last was also the day when the Jews offered their 
first sheaf. So that Pentecost day must also fall (as indeed it did every 
year) on a Sunday. Thus we reach the interesting fact that the day 
selected by God for the pentecostal outpouring, and the inauguration 
of the Gospel dispensation, was the Lord's day — a significant and splen- 
did testimony to the importance and honour it was intended to have in 
the Christian world. But we read in Acts i : 14, and ii : 1, that this 
day also was observed by the disciples as a day for social worship. 
Thus the first day of the week received a second, sacred and august 
witness, as the weekly solemnity of our religion, not only in its observ- 
ance by the whole body of the new church, but by the baptism of fire, 
and the Holy Ghost — a witness only second to that of Christ's victory 
over death and hell. Then the first public proclamation of the Gospel 
under the new dispensation began ; and surely, when every step, every 
act of the Divine Providence was formative and fundamental, it was 
not without meaning that God selected the first day of the week as the 
chosen day. 

Acts 20 : 7. Lord's Day at Troas. — It is most evident from the 
New Testament history, that the Apostles and early church uniformly 
celebrated their worship on the first day of the week. The hints are not 
numerous ; but they are sufficiently distinct. The next clear instance 
is in Acts xx : 7. The Apostle was now returning from his famous 
mission to Macedonia and Achaia, in full prospect of captivity at Jeru- 
salem. He stops at the little church of Troas, to spend a season with 
his converts there : "And upon the first day of the week when the dis- 
ciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, (ready 
to depart on the morrow), and continued his speech until midnight." 
Here we have a double evidence of our point. First, Paul preached 
unto the disciples on this day, while we see from the sixth verse, that 
he was a whole week in Troas, including the Jewish Sabbath. Why 
does he wait nearly a whole week to give these his more solemn and 
public instructions, unless there had been some usage ] Again : the 
words, "when the disciples came together to break bread," clearly indi- 
cate that the first day of the week was their habitual day for celebra- 
ting the Lord's Supper. So that it is clear, this Church of Troas planted 
and trained by Paul, was in the habit of consecrating the first day of 
the week to public worship ; and the inspired man here concurs in the 
habit. Neander does, indeed, suggest an evasion, in order to substan- 
tiate his assertion that there is no evidence the Lord's day was spe- 
cially sanctified during the life-time of Paul. He says that it is so, 
very probable this day was selected by the brethren, because Paul 
could not wait any longer, (ready to depart on the morrow,") that no 
safe inference can be drawn for a habitual observance of the day by 
them or Paul ! But chap, v: 6, tells us that Paul had been already 
waiting a whole week, and might have had choice of all the days of the 
week for his meeting ! No other word is needed to explode this sug- 
gestion. 

1 Cor. 16th: 1 and 2. — The next clear instance is in 1 Cor. xvi : 
1-2. " Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given 
order to the Churches of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of 
the week let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prosper- 
ed him, that there be no gatherings when I come." The points her© 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 2?9 

indicated are two — that the weekly oblation of alms-giving was fixed 
for the Lord's day — and that this rule was enacted for the Church of 
Corinth, and all those of Galatia. The inference is overwhelming, that 
the Apostle made the usage ultimately uniform in all the churches of 
his training. Neander again attempts to destroy this evidence for the 
sanctification of Sunday, by saying that this does not prove -there was 
any church meeting, or public worship on this day. The sum of alms 
was, most probably, simply laid aside at home, in an individual, private 
manner ; and this is made more probable by the Apostle's own words : 
" let every oue of you lay by him in store." But suppose this under- 
standing of the passage is granted, against the uniform custom and tra- 
dition of the earliest Christians, which testifies with one voice^ that the 
weekly alms-giving took place in the church meeting; Neander's point 
is not yet gained. Still this alms-giving was, in the New Testament 
meaning, an act of worship. See Phil, iv : 18. And the early tradition 
unanimously represents the first Christians as so regarding it. Hence, 
whether this alms-giving were in public or private, we have here an in- 
disputable instance, that an act of worship was appointed, by apostolic 
authority, to be statedly performed on the Lord's day, throughout the 
Churches. This is evidence enough that the first day of the week was 
the day already known and selected for thote forms of worship which 
were rather weekly than diurnal. 

John observes the First Day in Patmos. — But we return from this 
digression to the New Testament allusions to t:ie observance of the 
Lord's day. Only one other remains to be cited: that in Rev. i: 10. 
John the Apostle introduces the visions of Patmos, by saying, "I was 
in the spirit on the Lord's day." This is the only instance of the ap- 
plication of this title to the first day of the week in the sacred writings. 
But all expositors, ancient and modern, say unhesitatingly that Sunday 
is designated by it. On this point the Church has had but one under- 
standing, from the first century down. The Apostle evidently means 
to inform us that on Sunday he was engaged in a spiritual frame of 
mind and feelings. The application of the name, Lord's day, to Sunday, 
by inspired authority, of itself contains almost enough of significance to 
establish its claims to sanctification, without another text or example. 
What fair sense can it bear, except tbat it is a day consecrated to the 
Lord? Compare Isaiah lviii: 13, when God calls the Sabbath, "my 
holy-day." If the Sabbath is God's day, the Lord's day should mean 
a Christian Sabbath. And the occupation of the Apostle this day, with 
peculiar spiritual exercises, gives additional probability to the belief 
that it was observed by the New Testament Christians as a day of de- 
votion. 

Tradition of Lord's Day. — We come dow to the second branch of 
the historical argument — the testimony of the early, but uninspired 
Christian writers. The earliest of all cannot be called Christian. In 
the celebrated letter of inquiry written by Pliny the younger to the 
Emperor Trajan, for advice o Q the treatment of persons accused of 
Christianity, this pagan governor says, that it was the custom of these 
Christians, "to meet, stato die, before light, to sing a hymn to Christ as 
God, and bind each other in an oath (not to some crime) but to refrain 
from theft, robbery and adultery, not to break faith, and not to betray 
trust«." This letter was written a few years after the death of the 



260 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Apostle John. We cannot doubt that this stated day, discovered by 
Pliny, was the Lord's day. Ignatius, the celebrated martyr-bishop of 
Antioch, says, in his epistle to the Magnesians, written about A. D. 
107 or 116, that this is "the Lord's day, the day consecrated to the res- 
urrection, the queen and chief of all the days." 

Justin Martyr, who died about A. D. 160, says that the Christians 
"neither celebrated the Jewish festivals, nor observed their Sabbaths, 
nor practised circumcision. (Dialogue with Trypho, p. 34.) In another 
place, he says that "they, both those who lived in the city and those who 
lived in the country, were all accustomed to meet en the day which is 
denominated Sunday, for the reading of the Scriptures, prayer, exhor- 
tation and communion. The assembly met on Sunday, because this is 
the first day on which God having changed the darkness and the ele- 
ments, created the world ; and because Jesus our Lord on this day rose 
from the dead." 

The Epistle attributed to Barnabas, though not written by this apos- 
tolic man, is undoubtedly of early origin. This unknown writer intro- 
duces the Lord, as saying : "The Sabbaths which you now keep are not 
acceptable to me : but those which I have made when resting from all 
things, I shall begin the eighth day, that is the beginning of the other 
world." "For which cause, we (Christians) observe the eighth day with 
gladness, in which Jesus rose from the dead," &c. Eph. ch. xv. 

Tertullian, at the close of the second century, says ; "We celebrate 
Sunday as a joyful day. On the Lord's day we think it wrong to fast, 
or to kneel in prayer." 

Clement of Alexandria, cotemporary with Tertullian, says ; "A true 
Christian, according to the commands of the Gospel, observes the Lord's 
day by casting out all bad thoughts, and cherishing all goodness, hon- 
ouring the resurrection of the Lord, which took place on that day." 

But, perhaps, the most important, because the most learned, and, at 
the same time, the most explicit witness, is Eusebius, the celebrated 
bishop of Caesarea, who was in his literary prime about the era of the 
Council of Nice, A. D. 825. In his Commentary on the xcii Psalm, 
which the reader will remember, is entitled "a psalm or song for the 
Sabbath-day," he says : "The Word, (Christ), by the new covenant, 
translated and transferred the feast of the Sabbath to the morning light, 
and gave us the symbol of true rest, the saving Lord's day, the first 
(day) of light, in which the Saviour gained the victory over death, &c. 
On this day, which is the first of the Light, and the true Sun, we as- 
semble after the interval of six days, and celebrate holy and spiritual 
Sabbath ; even all nations redeemed by Him throughout the world as- 
semble, and do those things according to the spiritual law, which were 
decreed for the priests to do on the Sabbath. All things which it was 
duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord's day 
as more appropriately belonging to it, because it has the precedence, 
and is first in rank, and more honorable than the Jewish Sabbath. It 
is delivered to us (taradedotia) that we should meet together on this 
day, and it is evidence that we should do these things announced in 
this psalm." 

The first Church council which formally enjoined cessation of labour 
upon the Lord's day was the provincial synod of Laodicea, held a little 
after the middle of the fourth century. The twenty-ninth canon of 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 281 

this body commanded that none but necessary secular labours should be 
carried on upon Sunday. But Constantine the Great, when he adopted 
the Christian as the religion of the State, had already enacted that all 
the labours of courts of justice, civil and military functionaries, and 
handicraft trades, should be suspended on the Lord's day, and that it 
should be devoted to prayer and public worship. This suspension of 
labour was not, however, extended to agriculturists, because it was sup- 
posed that they must needs avail themselves of the propitious season 
to gather their harvests, or sow their seed, without regard to sacred 
days. But the Emperor Leo (who came to the throne A. D. 457) ulti- 
mately extended the law to all classes of persons. 

Christian Nomenclature. — The Christians did not for several hun- 
dred years apply the word Sabbath to the first day of the week, but al- 
ways used it distinctly to indicate the Jewish seventh day. Their own 
sacred day, the first day, was called by them the Lord's day (hemera 
kuriake), as they said, because it was dedicated to the honour of 
Christ, and because it was the head, crown, and chief of all the days. 
They also called it Sunday (Dies solis, a phrase frequently found among 
the Latin Christians), because, according to their interpretation of Gen. 
i : 3, the sun was created on the first day of the week ; but still more, 
because on that day the brighter Sun of Righteousness arose from the 
dead, with healing in His beams. The objection often made by per- 
sons over puritanical, that it smacks of Pagan or Scandinavian profanity 
to say Sunday, because the word indicates a heathenish consecration of 
the day to the sun, is therefore more Quakerish than sensible. We are 
willing to confess that we always loved the good old name Sunday — 
name worthy of that day which should ever seem the brightest in the 
Christian's conceptions, of all the week, when the glorious works of 
the natural creation first began to display the honours of the great Cre- 
ator, and when that new and more divine creation of redeeming grace 
was perfected by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But, in the appli- 
cation of the phrase " Christian Sabbath " to the first day, the West- 
minster Assembly had a definite and truthful design, although the early 
Church had not given it this name. It was their intention to express 
thus that vital head of their theory; that the Old Testament institute 
called Sabbath, which was coeval with man, and was destined to co- 
exist with all dispensations, was not abrogated ; that it still existed 
substantially, and that Christians were now to find it in the Lord's day. 
To the Christian the Lord's day is the Sabbath. (Such is the significance 
of the name) possessing the Divine authority, and demanding in the 
main the sanctification which was formerly attached to the seventh day. 

4. Practical Argument. —Another most interesting and practical 
head of the Sabbath argument remains: from its practical necessity, as 
a means of securing man's corporeal and mental health, his morality, 
his temporal success in life, and his religious interests. This is the 
department of the discussion which has been more particularly un- 
folded in the "Permanent Sabbath Documents," published under the 
auspices of Dr. Justin Edwards, and more recently in the remarkable 
essays on the Sabbath, produced by workingmen in Great Britain. It 
is now by so much the best understood part of the Sabbath discussion 
that we should not have introduced it at all except that it was one of 
the stones in the arch of our attempted demonstration, that there is a 



282 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

natural necessity in man for a Sabbath rest. The Creator, who ap- 
pointed the Sabbath, formed man's frame; and all intelligent observers 
are now agreed that the latter was adapted to the former. Either body 
or mind can do more work by resting one day in seven, than by labour- 
ing all the seven days. And neither mind nor body can enjoy health 
and continued activity without its appointed rest. Even the structure 
of the brutes exhibits the same law. Again : As a moral and social 
institution, a weekly rest is invaluable. It is a quiet domestic reunion 
for the bustling sons of toil. It ensures the necessary vacation in those 
earthly and turbulent anxieties and affections, which would otherwise 
become inordinate and morbid. It brings around a season of periodical 
neatness and decency, when the soil of weekly labour is laid aside, and 
men meet each other amidst the decencies of the sanctuary, and renew 
their social affections. But above all, a Sabbath is necessary for man's 
moral and religious interests. Even in Paradise, and in man's state of 
innocence, it was true that a stated season, resolutely appropriated to 
religious exercises, was necessary to his welfare as a religious being. A 
creature subject to the law of habit, of finite faculties, and required by 
the conditions of his existence to distribute his attention and labours 
between things secular and things sacred, cannot successfully accom- 
plish this destiny without a regular distribution of his time between the 
two great departments. This is literally a physical necessity. And 
when we add the consideration that man is now a being of depraved, 
earthly affections, prone to avert his eyes from heaven to the earth, the 
necessity is still more obvious. Man does nothing regularly for which 
he has not a regular time. The absolute necessity of the Sabbath, as a 
season for the public preaching of religion and morality, as a leisure 
time for the domestic religious instruction of the young, as a time for 
private self-examination and devotion, is most clear to all who admit 
the importance of these duties. And now, it is most obvious to practi- 
cal good sense, that if such a stated season is necessary, then it is pro- 
per that it should be ordained and marked off by Divine authority, and 
not by a sort of convention on man's part. To neglect the stated ob- 
servance of a religious rest, is to neglect religion. And when there 
is so much of mundane and carnal affection — so much of craving, eager 
worldly bustle — to entice us to an infringement of this sacred rest, it is 
certain that it will be neglected unless it be defended by the highest 
sanction of God's own authority. Nay, do we not see that this sanction 
is insufficient, even among some who admit its validity? Again: If 
such a stated rest is necessary, then it is also necessary that its metes 
and bounds be defined by the same authority which enjoins the rest 
itself. Otherwise, the license which men will allow themselves in in- 
terpreting the duration of the season, and in deciding how much con- 
stitutes the observance of it, or how little, will effectually abrogate the 
rest itself. If, then, the necessities of human nature require a Sabbath, 
it does not appear how God could ordain less than we suppose hs has 
done, in requiring the whole of a definite length of time to be faith- 
fully devoted to religious exercises, and in making this command ex- 
plicit and absolute. 



Of lectures in theology. &U 

LECTURE XXXI. 



SYLLABUS. 
SECOND TABLE— ("Fifth and Sixth Commandments). 

1. What is the general scope of the Fifth Commandment ? 

2. Show that under the words, Father and Mother, all superiors in family, 
Church, and State, are included. 

3. What is the meaning of the promise attached r 

4. What is required and forbidden in the Sixth Commandment ? 

5. Does it prohibit the slaying of animals for food ? 

6. Does it prohibit defensive war, or personal self-defence ? 

7. Are capital punishments righteous ? 

8. Is Duelling murder ? 

Shorter Catechism, que. 63-69. Larger Catechism, que. 123-136* 
Calvin Inst., Bk. II, Ch. 8, § 35-40. 
Turrettin, Loc. XI, que. 16 and 17. 
Green's Lectures, 46 to 50. 
Ridgeley's Divinity, que. 123-136* 

We enter now upon the consideration of the Second Table. The im- 
mediate objects of the duties of this Table are our fellow-men. But 
still the breach of one of them is a sin against God alsoj because it is 
He who has enjoined them, and has placed us in those relations in which 
the duties arise. 

I. Scope of Fifth Commandment. Parents represent all Su- 
periors. — As the first Table began with that which is fundamental to 
all religion, the pointing out of the only proper Object of religious ser- 
vice ; so the second Table begins with that duty which is fundamental 
to all social duties, and the most important of all ; subjection to domes- 
tic authority. I must here again remind you of the rule of interpreta- 
tion laid down at the outset that a whole class of duties is enjoined, and 
of sins forbidden, under one prominent specimen. So, we understand 
that here, under the example of filial duties, all the: relative duties be- 
tween superiors and inferiors, in the family, the church, and the com- 
monwealth, are included. Not only the duties of children to parents, 
but of servants to masters, pupils to teachers, and people to rulers in 
Church and State, are here implied. If these, most important classes 
of social duties are not intended to be included in this precept, then 
they are nowhere in the decalogue : for there is no other precept where 
they can be fairly embraced. Can we believe that the summary so 
often omits what the subsequent Scriptures so often enforce in detail? 
The including of all these duties under the Fifth Commandment will 
seem far more natural, if we remember that the original forms of gov- 
ernment in the old world were all patriarchal ; in which the Father was 
the head, priest, and prince of all his descendants and servants. The 
family was no doubt the germ out of which civil institutions and the 
organized Church grew. The Jewish nation was just now passing, in 
part, out of this patriarchal form; and many of its features were re- 
tained in the Mosaic government. How natural then, to an ancient Is- 
raelite, to represent the general idea of civil and ecclesiastical superiors 
under the term Parents 1 Servants (who were usually slaves) were on 
much the same footing in ancient society with children. Kings were 



284 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

called Fathers, 1 Saml. xxiv : 11. Prophets were generally addressed 
as Fathers, by the young men entrusted to their religious instruction, 
who, in turn, were called "sons of the prophets," 1 1 Kings ii : 3 and 13. 
Obligations are Reciprocal. — Many duties are of a reciprocal na- 
ture. Obligation on one side implies a correlative obligation on the 
other. Thus, the duties of inferiors imply the reciprocal duties of su- 
periors. Under this Commandment then, are included the duties of pa- 
rents towards their children, masters towards servants, rulers towards 
subjects, church-teachers towards their charges. Thus, we find that St. 
Paul, in the former part of the sixth chapter of Ephesians, (which may 
fairly be taken as his exposition of the Fifth Commandment), begins 
with the duties of children towards parents, bat follows it up immedi- 
ately with the duties of parents towards their children ; and after in- 
structing servants, proceeds immediately to instruct their masters. We 
feel therefore fully justified in giving the Fifth Commandment the gen- 
eral scope assigned to it in the Catechism. "The general scope of the 
Fifth Commandment is the performance of those duties which we mu- 
tually owe in our several relations, as superiors, inferiors, or equals." 

II. It is under this head of the decalogue, that the important Scrip- 
ture doctrine of the authority of the civil magistrate, and duty of citi- 
zens, should fall, which is the subject of the 23d chapter of our Confes- 
sion. But this is a subject of so much importance, that I reserve it for 
separate discussion in the Senior course. The details of the other du- 
ties of inferiors and superiors may be seen so fully stated in your cate- 
chisms, that it would be mere repetition to recite them here. 

III. Extent of the Promise. — The fifth commandment is peculiar 
in closing with a promise to encourage to its observance, " That thy 
days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
As a long life spent in adversity would be no boon, this promise is ob- 
viously understood as one of " long life and prosperity." We under- 
stand it to give us that encouragement which is also presented by the 
established connexion of causes and effects in God's providence, where 
the faithful and general performance of the duties of inferiors and su- 
periors, and especially of parents and children, ensures, as far as any 
earthly means can, general health, peace, prosperity and temporal wel- 
fare ; whereas the anarchical neglect of those duties, and especially of 
the parental and filial, plunges every society into violence, disease, dis- 
order, misery, and premature death. We do not understand God's pro- 
mise in this commandment as absolute and universal. To claim this 
would be to claim that God should work for dutiful sons a continual 
miracle, in suspending the mutual influences of men on each other's 
welfare, by which the virtuous, especially when few, share the calami- 
ties procured by the more prevalent crimes of the wicked. The pro- 
mise is given to a society (as to Israel) in the aggregate. The general 
performance of the duty is necessary to ensure the happy result. If 
there is a general neglect of the duties, as in our day, it must result in 
calamities ; and some of the most dutiful of our sons may fall, as many 
a virtuous Confederate soldier fell, in the prime of his days, in the 
general disorder. 

IV. Scope of Sixth Commandment. — The sixth commandment is 
in these terse words : " Thou shalt not kill." Its obvious scope is the 
preservation of life. It forbids all that unrighteously assails our own 



OF LECTURES ttf THEOLOGY. 285 

and others' lives, and enjoins all suitable means for the preservation of 
both. This command is based upon these two great truths: that life 
is God's gift, and therefore to be abridged or taken away only at His 
command ; and that life is the supreme value to every man. In rob- 
bing a man of life, you would virtually rob him of every valuable 
thing which life includes. We have here, then, another instance of the 
profoundly logical arrangement which infinite wisdom has given to the 
decalogue. The second table, after fixing those relative duties out of 
which society itself emerges, then proceeds to protect, first, that value 
which is transcendent with every man — his temporal existence. It then 
secures that which is next in order of essential importance — man's chas- 
tity, including the purity of the marital relation, the foundation of the 
domestic ; and postpones to the last those duties of commutative right- 
eousness, and of truth, which are the outer bonds of society. 

V. Animal Life may be Taken. — But when God says, "Thou shalt 
not kill," what are the things whose slaying is thus inhibited? There 
is a small class of fanatics in Christian lands, larger in some Pagan 
ones, who answer, that we may kilt nothing that has animal life. Hence 
the use of the flesh of quadrupeds, birds, and fishes, for food, is of 
course inhibited by them. This party is known in America as Graham- 
ites. Their tendency is infidel; for the Bible speaks too plainly on 
this subject to be questioned by any devout believer. We read that 
God gave to Adam and his family only the vegetable world for food, 
assigning him the use of the animals as his servants. (Hence, the skins 
in which God clothed Adam and Eve after their fall must have come 
either from the religious sacrifices which He taught them to offer, the 
more probable surmise ; or from beasts which died by the violence of 
their own kind, or by disease.) But after the flood, the fruitfulness of 
the earth having been probably impaired for all subsequent time, God 
expressly gave Noah and his family the privilege of eating the flesh of 
animals, only reserving the blood, with which they should " make 
atonement for their souls upon the altar." This permission is doubt- 
less now valid. It was expressly continued to the Hebrews, in the dis- 
tinction of the clean beasts. It is equally certain that it was not abro- 
gated after Christ came ; for we find him, even after His resurrection 
(Luke xxiv : 43 ; Jco. xxi : 9), eating the flesh of fishes, and encourag- 
ing His followers to do so. 

Reason approves this. The sanctity of human life is plaeed, where 
inspiration places it (in Gen. ix : 6). in man's rational responsibility 
and immortality. The life of the beast, " whose spirit goeth down- 
ward," is no such inviolable boon to him. And while we admit that 
the duty of benevolence extends to the brutes, as does God's benevo- 
lence, we argue that the employment of animals for food has, on the 
whole, greatly promoted their animal well-being. For man thus has a 
sufficient motive for their careful nurture, whereas otherwise he would 
regard them as nuisances. 

VI. Capital Punishments and Defensive War, &c, Not For- 
bidden. — Still another, and a larger class of fanatics, hold that there 
are no circumstances under which human life can be taken lawfully by 
man. Claiming the admission which we have made, that life is to man 
God's loan, they urge that no creature can under any circumstances as- 
sume authority to take it away from his fellow man. Hence it must 



286 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

follow that personal self-defence against unrighteous aggression, that 
the defensive wars of commonwealths, and the infliction of capital pun- 
ishments upon the most enormous criminals even, are all unlawful. 
Here is the theory of the "non-resistance " and the "peace parties." 

Arguments — Magistrate Slays by Delegated Authority. — I 
may make the same remark of these, that they are virtually infidel par- 
ties. If the authority of the Scriptures is admitted, their conclusions 
are obviously false. They are as obviously illogical. It is true that 
human life is God's loan to his creatures. No one may take it away 
without the authority of the Divine Giver. It is therefore simply a 
question of revealed testimony, whether God has, in any cases, depu- 
tized to man, or to society, the authority to take life. If he has, then 
it is God's authority which, in the appropriate case, takes away the 
boon ; and the human agent is merely God's executioner. It is, then, 
simply a question of fact as to the Scriptural teachings. 

Self-Defence Lawful. — If life is thus sacred, as God's boon, and 
is man's one possession of transcendent value, then to take it away 
without right is an enormous outrage. Suppose this outrage is obvi- 
ously about to be perpetrated by an aggressor upon an innocent per- 
son. Suppose, also, that the protection of the law is absent, and can- 
not be successfully invoked ] What shall the defendant do ? Is it his 
duty to be passive and yield up his life ; or to take the defensive, and 
protect it by force, even to the extent of taking the assailant's life if 
necessary 1 Human laws and conscience concur in the latter answer. 
Remember that the aggressor unrighteously creates the dilemma, mak- 
ing it necessary that at least one life must go. Whose had best go 1 
Obviously the life of the criminal, rather than that of the innocent 
man. Again : If law subsequently has its just course, the murderer, 
after his guilty success, will have to die for it. The case is then still 
stronger: that the passive theory sacrifices two lives, one innocent; 
whereas the theory of self-defence saves the righteous life, and only 
sacrifices the guilty one. Our conclusion is also confirmed by the ex- 
istence in us of the emotion of lawful resentment, the righteousness of 
which, within its proper bounds, the Saviour allows (Matt, v : 22 ; Eph. 
iv : 26). For if there is no forcible self-defence against wrong, there is 
no reasonable scope for this emotion. 

The Scriptures expressly confirm us. The right of slaying the house- 
breaker clearly implies a right of self-defence. Exod. xxii : 2. The 
law of the cities of refuge contains the same right. Numb, xxxv : 22. 
The effect of this permission is evaded, indeed, by the pretence that 
Moses' legislation was imperfect and barbarous, and is corrected by 
the milder instructions of our Saviour. Matt, v : 39. But I have 
taught you the falsehood of this notion, and showed you that the Old 
Testament teaohes precisely the same morality with the New. 

Capital Punishment in Scripture. — As to the delegation of the 
right of capital punishment for flagrant crimes, the feeble attempt has 
been made to represent the injunction of Gen. ix : 6 as not a precept, 
but a prediction ; not as God's instruction what ought to be done to the 
murderer, but His prophecy of what human vindictiveness would do. 
The context refutes this. Look also at the express injunction of capi- 
tal punishments for several crimes in the Pentateuch : for murder, Num. 
xxxv : 31 ; for striking a parent, Exod. xxi : 15 ; for adultery, Levit. xx : 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 287 

10; for religious imposture, Deut. xiii : 5, &c. In Numb, xxxv : 33, a 
reason is given which, on general principles, necessitates the capital 
punishment of murder : "For blood, it defileth a land, and the land 
cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood 
of him that shed it. Capital punishments are also authorized in the 
New Testament. Rom. xiii assures us that the magistrate " beareth 
not the sword in vain," but in bearing it he is God's minister to exe- 
cute wrath upon the evil-doer. 

VII. Defensive War Lawful. — Unprovoked war is the most mon- 
strous secular crime that can be committed : it is at once the greatest 
of evils, and includes the worst forms of robbery and murder. Wher- 
ever war is prompted by mere pique, or lust of aggrandisement, or am- 
bition for fame and power, it deserves all that can be said of its mis- 
chiefs and criminality by the most zealous advocates of peace. And 
nothing can rescue a people waging war, from this guilt, except the fact 
that their appeal to arms is nesessary for the defence of just and vital 
rights. But while the Scriptures teach this, they give no countenance 
to the weak fanaticism, which commands governments to practice a pas- 
sive non-resistance, in such a world as this. Nations are usually unjust 
and unscrupulous. The very fact that they are politically sovereign 
implies that there is no umpire between them, except Divine Provi- 
dence. A passive attitude would usually only provoke, instead of dis- 
arming attack. Hence its only effect would be to bring all the horrors 
and desolations of invasion upon the innocent people, while the guilty 
went free. God has therefore both permitted and instructed rulers, 
when thus unjustly assailed, to retort these miseries upon the assailants 
who introduce them. The very fact that all war is so terrific a scourge, 
and that aggressive war is such an enormous crime, only makes it more 
clear that the injured party are entitled to their redress, and are justi- 
fied in inflicting on the injurers such chastisement as will compel their 
return to justice, even including the death and ruin which they were 
preparing against their inoffensive neighbors. 

It is perfectly clear that Sacred Scripture legalizes such defensive 
war. Abram, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Josiah, the Maceabees, 
were such warriors : and they were God's chosen saints. It was "through 
faith they waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the 
aliens." Heb. xi : 34. God fovght for and with them by giving, in 
their battles, answers to their prayers, and miraculous assistance to their 
arms. Under the New Testnment, when Christ's forerunner was preach- 
ing the baptism of repentance, he did not enjoin on soldiers the surren- 
der of their profession as sinful, but only the restricting of themselves 
to its lawful duties. The New Testament tells us of a Centurion, af- 
fectionately commended by our Redeemer as possessed of "great faith ;" 
and of a Cornelius, who was "accepted with God, as fearing Him and 
working righteousness." Luke iii : 14 ; vii : 9 ; Acts x : 35. The Apos- 
tle Paul, Rom. xiii : 4, tells us that the magistrate "beareth not the 
sword in vain ; for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute 
wrath upon him that doeth evil." It would be strange indeed, if the 
ruler who is armed by God with the power of capital punishment against 
the domestic murderer, could not justly inflict the same doom on the 
foreign criminal, who invades our soil unprovoked, for the purpose of 
shedding blood. The security of life and property which the magis* 



288 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

• 
trate is intended to provide by his power of punishing, would be illuso- 
ry indeed, if it could only be used against individual criminals, while 
the more mischievous and widespread crimes of organized multitudes 
must go unpunished. Aggressive war is wholesale murder; and when 
the government sends out its army to repel and chastise the invader, 
it does but inflict summary execution on the murderer caught in the 
act. 

VIII. Duelling Murder. — The modern duel is a very peculiar usage, 
which has descended to us from a perversion of an institution of chiv- 
alry ; the ordeal by battle. This was a means adopted by the ignorance 
of the middle ages, to appeal to God's judgment where the question of 
right was too obscure to be unravelled by their rude courts. It was 
founded on an abuse of the doctrine of Providence. Because the Scrip- 
tures teach that this providence is concerned in all events, the Middle 
Ages jumped to the conclusion, that this providence would so decide 
the issue, as to vindicate justice. It needs no argument to show you 
the fallacy. Since the intelligence of modern days has exploded the 
idea of the divine ordeal, the duel remains, a barbarous remnant of the 
middle ages, without even the shadow of an argument in its favor. 

Arguments for it Futile. — In refuting the arguments by which the 
duel is defended, I shall not take the ground that the sentiment of per- 
sonal honour is irrational or unchristian : I shall not assume that it is 
no real injury to wound it. My position is, that the duel is no proper 
remedy for that injury. And, first ; the only lawful object, when one 
is wounded in his honour, is self-defence, and not revenge. The latter 
is expressly forbidden in every case. Now, for the defence of one's 
honour and good name, a duel is naught. Perhaps where malignant 
passions are not harboured, the challenger to a duel is most frequently 
actuated by this feeling; that his passive endurance of an insult will 
cause his fellow-men to think him a coward ; and that therefore he must 
expose himself to the dangers of combat, in order to evince that he is 
not a coward ; and thus retrieve his credit. Now duelling does not 
prove courage ; for notoriously, if some brave men have fought so have 
many cowards. It only proves a species of moral cowardice, which 
shrinks from the path of rectitude, and cowers before the finger of scorn. 
It is yet more obvious that the issue of the duel will prove nothing as 
to the truth or falsehood of the charge which constituted the insult. 
If one calls me a liar, and I kill him therefor, this shows nothing what- 
ever as to my truth or falsehood. The proper and reasonable remedy 
here, is to require the accuser to substantiate his charge, or else con- 
fess its injustice. His refusal to do either would place him so effectu- 
ally in the wrong, that no other reparation would be needed. 
. Duels Unfair. — Another objection to the duel is, that it usually 
prevents, and that in the most deadly manner, that very fairness and 
equality which it boasts of securing. The plea is, that it puts the weak 
man equal to the strong one, by appealing from mere, brute muscle, to 
arms and skill. But according to its laws, the duel authorizes an ine- 
quality of skill far more deadly. I am ignorant of the use of the 
pistol. A violent and malignant man who knows himself a dead shot, 
so outrages me, that I am impelled under the code of honour, to chal- 
lenge him. He, exercising the right of the challenged, chooses pistols. 
Thus he has me more completely at a disadvantage than if he were a 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 289 

pugilist of the first fame, and I an infant ; and the result is not a parcel 
of bruises, but my death. The system is, when tried by its own pre- 
tences, flagrantly unfair. 

Jeopardizing of the Injured Unjust. — It is also absurdly unequal 
in this : that if its proceedings have any justice, then it puts the right- 
eous man and the culprit on the same footing. Unless the challenger is 
committing a monstrous wrong, he must hold that the challenged is a 
capital criminal : For does he not claim that it is right to subject 
him to the liability of a capital punishment 1 Why then should the 
innocent man, already so grievously wronged, when he proceeds to inflict 
the righteous penalty, give the culprit equal chances to inflict the same 
penalty on him? Shall the magistrate, in putting a condemned felon 
to death, courteously invite him to take his equal chances to put the 
magistrate to death 1 What more absurd? If the assailant really de- 
serves to die, and this is duly ascertained (if it is not the challenger is 
guilty of murder in seeking to slay an innocent man) then by all means, 
let him be killed, without giving him opportunity to perpetrate another 
unprovoked crime. When one has to kill a mad dog, he does not feel 
bound to give the dog a chance to bite him ! 

The interested made Judge, &c. — Last, the duelling code is a mon- 
strous one, because it makes the man who supposes himself wronged, 
accuser, judge, and executioner in his own cause. It is righteously 
then, that the statute laws of the Commonwealth treat the duellist who 
has slain his adversary, as a murderer with prepense malice. 

Pleas Refuted. — One plea for duelling is, that it is the necessary 
chastisement for classes of sins, (as against one's good name, against the 
chastity of one's family) for which the laws afford either no remedy, or 
such a one as no man of delicacy can seek. The answer is : that if the 
facts are true, they are arguments for perfecting the penal laws, not for 
the iniquities of duelling. Another argument is 5 that nothing but the 
code of honour will secure chivalrous manners ; which it boasts of doing 
through the influence of the knowledge that the man who departs from 
that style of manners is in danger of a challenge. The answers are two. 
Surely that courtesy has little claim to be chivalrous, which is only 
coerced by fear! And facts show that the influence of the code is not 
what is claimed ; for the societies where it has fullest sway, are always 
the rudest and most debauched. 



29® SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

LECTURE XXXI. 



SYLLABUS. 
SECOND TABLE— (Seventh and Eighth Commandments.) 

1. What is the scope and extent of the Seventh Commandment, and what sins 
are forhidden binder it ? 

2. What the degree of guilt in adultery ; and what its grounds f 

3. "Was polygamy ever lawful ? Explain Moses' Law of Divorce. 

4. Ought the duties of this Commandment to be now publicly preached ? 

5. What is the scope of the Eighth Commandment ? And what the particular 
duties and sins embraced under it f 

6. What is the origin of the right of private property ? 

7. Is usury lawful ? 

8. What rule should govern the Christian as to taking advantage of gain from 
the necessities of his neighbour f 

See on the Whole. 
Larger Catechism, que. 137 to 142. 
Turrettin, Loc. XI, que. 18th and 19th. 
Calvin's Inst., Bk. II, ch. 8, § 41-46. 
Ridgeley's Divinity, que. 137-142. 
Green's Leet. on Shorter Catechism, 51 to 53. 

I. Scope of Seventh Commandment. — As has been already ob- 
served, the scope of the Seventh Commandment is to regulate the rela- 
tions between the sexes, with all the virtues of purity connected there- 
with. These virtues are the basis of the domestic relations. And as 
the family is the foundation of human society, the importance of the 
class of duties involved is second only to those which preserve man's 
existence itself. It should be added also, that the sins against personal 
purity are peculiarly flagrant, because they involve in sensual bestiali- 
ty the body which is the habitation of the rational, responsible soul, 
and the temple of the Holy Ghost. See 1 Cor. vi : 15, &c. Experi- 
ence also shows that sins of unchastity have a peculiarly imbruting and 
degrading effect on both sexes, but especially on that which should be 
the purer, seducing them to hypocrisy, lying, treachery, cruelty, drunk- 
enness, gluttony^ and shamelessness. For the usual details of the sins 
embraced under the capital instance, adultery, I refer you to your cate- 
chisms. 

II. Criminality of Adultery. — x\dultery, rn strictness of speech, 
is the sin of illicit cohabitation by a married person. Its eminence in 
criminality is due to these traits ; that in addition to the uncleanness, 
it involves the breach of the marriage contract, and the treachery con- 
tained therein ; and that by corrupting the descent of families, it up- 
roots the whole foundation of domestic society. The marriage of one 
man to one woman is the foundation of society. Adultery and cause- 
less divorce are directly antagonistic thereto. They are therefore dead- 
ly stabs against all home affections, against all training of children, 
against every rudiment of social order. Were all to take the license of 
the adulterer, men would in due time be reduced precisely to the deg- 
radation of wild beasts. The sin of the adulterer therefore, is scarcely 
less enormous than that of the murderer. The latter destroys man's 
temporal existence ; the former destroys all that makes existence a boon „ 
Let the crime of the adulterer be tried by its effects upon the family 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY/ 291 

it invades. We must either suppose that the husband and wife have, 
or have not, the sentiments of modesty, natural jealousy, purity, and 
shame, usually imputed to virtuous persons. If they have not, then 
the' lack of them implies a degradation which can only make them the 
parents of reprobates; and the general prevalence of such a type of 
character would dissolve domestic society into ultimate putreseenee. 
If the parents have those Sentiments., then the success of the seducer 
plunges the husband into agonies of revenge, despair and wounded af- 
fection, the guilty wife into a shame and remorse deeper than the grave, 
the children into privation of a mother, and all the parties into a bereave- 
ment at least as irreparable as that of a death, and far more bitter. It 
would have been, in some aspects, a less crime to murder the mother 
while innocent. 

Proper Punishment of it. — The laws of Moses, therefore, very pro- 
perly made adultery a capital crime; nor does our Saviour, in the inci- 
dent of the woman taken in adultery, repeal that statute, or disallow 
its justice. The legislation of modern, nominally Christian nations, 
is drawn rather from the grossness of Pagan sourees than from Bible 
principles. The common law of England, and the statutes and usages 
which our Commonwealth has drawn thence, present a most inconsis- 
tent state. There is no statute whatever for punishing adultery as a 
crime ! And yet a usage, which is as fully recognized both in England 
and in Virginia as any common law, entitles juries to acquit the injured 
husband of murder who slays the violator of his bed in heat of blood. 
This seems to be a recognition of the capital guilt of the crime of 
adultery, and at the same time an allowance, in this ease, of the barba- 
rous principle of ' goelism,' which the law, in all other eases, has so 
stringently prohibited. But here is the monstrous inconsistency, that 
if the crime of the adulterer be of long standing, and gradually discov- 
ered., no matter how certain the guilt, the husband, because no longer 
punishing in heat of blood, is debarred from inflicting the just punish- 
ment. The only other remedy that remains at the law is an action of 
damages against the sedueer, in which the injured husband is con- 
strained to degrade all his wrongs to the sordid pecuniary piea of the 
loss of his wife's services, as a domestic, by this interference. And 
juries are instructed, after ascertaining that there has been an unjust 
interruption of the wife's domestic services, to appraise the compensa- 
tion, not at its commercial, but at any imaginary value, which the se- 
ducer's wealth may enable him to pay. Such is the wretched fiction 
which the law offers to the outraged spouse as the satisfaction for his 
wrongs. ■ 

IIL Divorce anc Polygamy in Pentateuch. — It has always seemed 
to me that much causeless doubt and debate exist among expositors, 
and that many gratuitous admissions have been made by the most of 
them, touching the true status of polygamy and divorce in the Old Tes- 
tament. But so much misapprehension exists about the two cases, that 
the general interests of truth prompt a little farther separate discus- 
sion ot each. The two enactments touching divorce which present the 
supposed contradiction in the strongest form, are those of Moses in 
Deut. xxiv : 1 to 4, and Matt, xix : 3 to 9. These the reader is re- 
quested to have under his eye. The form of the Pharisees' question 
to Christ, "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife/wr every causeV 



292 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

concurs with the testimony of Josephus, in teaching us that a mon- 
strous perversion of Moses' statute then prevailed. The licentious, and 
yet self-righteous Pharisee claimed, as one of his most unquestioned 
privileges, the right to repudiate a wife, after the lapse of years, and 
birth of children, for any caprice whatsoever. The trap which they 
now laid for Christ was designed to compel him either to incur the 
odium of attacking this usage, guarded by a jealous anger, or to con- 
nive at their interpretation of the statute. Manifestly Christ does not 
concede that they interpreted Moses rightly ; but indignantly clears the 
legislation of that holy man from their licentious perversions, and 
then, because of their abuse of it, repeals it by His plenary authority. 
He refers to that constitution of the marriage tie which was original, 
which preceded Moses, and was therefore binding when Moses wrote, 
to show that it was impossible he could have enacted what they claimed. 
What, then, did Moses enact ? Let us explain it. In the ancient so- 
ciety of the East, females being reared in comparative seclusion, and 
marriages negotiated by intermediaries, the bridegroom had little op- 
portunity for a familiar acquaintance even with the person of the bride. 
When she was brought to him at the nuptials, if he found her disfigured 
with some personal deformity or disease (the undoubted meaning of 
the phrase "some uncleanness"), which effectually changed desire into 
disgust, he was likely to regard himself as swindled in the treaty, and 
to send the rejected bride back with indignity to her father's house. 
There she was reluctantly received, and in the anomalous position of 
one in name a wife, yet without a husband, she dragged out a wretched 
existence, incapable of marriage, and regarded by her parents and bro- 
thers as a disgraceful incumbrance. It was to relieve the wretched 
late of such a woman that Moses' law was framed. She was empow- 
ered to exact of her proposed husband a formal annulment of the un- 
consummated contract, and to resume the status of a single woman, eli- 
gible for another marriage. It is plain that Moses' law contemplates 
the case, only, in which no consummation of marriage takes- place. She 
finds no favour in the eyes " of the bridegroom." He is so indignant 
and disgusted that desire is put to flight by repugnance. The same 
fact appears from the condition of the law, that she shall in no case re- 
turn to this man, "after she is defiled," i. e., after actual cohabitation 
with another man had made her unapproachable (without moral de- 
filement) by the first. Such was the narrow extent of this law. The 
act for which it provided was divorce only in name, where that consen- 
sus, qui matrimonium facit, in the words of the law maxim, had never 
been perfected. The state of social usages among the Hebrews, with 
parental and fraternal severity towards the unfortunate daughter and 
sister, rendered the legislation of Moses necessary and righteous at the 
time ; but "a greater than Moses" was now here ; and he, after defend- 
ing the inspired law-giver from their vile misrepresentation, proceeded 
to repeal the law, because it had been so perverted, and because the 
social changes of the age had removed its righteous grounds. 

The case of the polygamist is still clearer; for we assert that the 
whole legislation of the Pentateuch and of all the Old Testament is only 
adverse to polygamy. As some Christian divines have taught other- 
wise, we must ask the reader's attention and patience for a brief state- 
ment. Polygamy is recorded of Abraham, Jacob, Gideon, Elkanah, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 293 

David, Solomon ; but so are other sins of several of these ; and, as every 
intelligent reader knows, the truthful narrative of holy writ as often 
discloses the sins of good men for our warning, as their virtues for our 
imitation. And he who notes how, in every Bible instance, polygamy 
appears as the cause of domestic feuds, sin, and disaster, will have little 
doubt that the Holy Spirit tacitly holds all these cases up for our cau- 
tion, and not our approval. But, then, God made Adam one wife only, 
and taught him the great law of the perpetual unity of the twain, just 
as it is now expounded by Jesus Christ. (Genesis ii : 23,24, with Mat- 
thew xix : 4 to 6.) God preserved but one wife each to Noah and his 
sons. In every statute and preceptive word of the Holy Spirit, it is 
always wife, and not wives. The prophets everywhere teach how to 
treat a wife, and not ivives. Moses, Leviticus xviii : 18, in the code reg- 
ulating marriage, expressly prohibits the marriage of a second wife in 
the life of the first, thus enjoining monogamy in terms as clear as 
Christ's. Our English version hath it : "Neither shalt thon take a wife 
to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, besides the other, in her 
lifetime." Some have been preposterous enough to take the word sister 
here in its literal sense, and thus to force on the law the meaning that 
the man desiring to practice polygamy may do so provided he does not 
marry two daughters of the same parents ; for if he did this, the two 
sisters sharing his bed would, like Rachel and Leah, quarrel more 
fiercely than two strangers. But the word "sister" must undoubtedly 
be taken in the sense of mates, fellows, (which it bears in a multitude of 
places), and this for two controlling reasons. The other sense makes 
Moses talk nonsense and folly, in the supposed reason for his prohibi- 
tion ; in that it makes him argue that two sisters sharing one man's bed 
will quarrel, but two women having no kindred blood will not. It is 
false to fact and to nature. Did Leah and Rachel show more jealousy 
than Sarah and Hagar, Hannah and Peninnah 1 But when we under- 
stand the law in its obvious sense, that the husband shall not divide his 
bed with a second mate, the first still living, because such a wrong ever 
harrows and outrages the great instincts placed in woman's heart by her 
Creator, we make Moses talk truth and logick worthy of a profound le- 
gislator. The other reason for this construction is, that the other sense 
places the 18th verse in irreconcilable contradiction to the 16th verse. 
This forbids the marriage of a woman to the husband of her deceased 
sister; while the 18th verse, with this false reading, would authorize it. 
Once more: Malachi (chap, ii : 14, 15), rebuking the various corrup- 
tions of the Jews, evidently includes polygamy ; for he argues in favour 
of monogamy (and also against causeless divorce) from the fact that 
God, "who had the residue of the Spirit," and could as easily have cre- 
ated a thousand women for each man as a single one, made the num- 
bers of the sexes equal from the beginning. He states this as the mo- 
tive, "that He might seek a godly seed ;" that is to say, that the object 
of God in the marriage relation was the right rearing of children, which 
polygamy notoriously hinders. Now the commission of an Old Testa- 
ment prophet was not to legislate a new dispensation, for the laws of 
Moses were in full force : the prophets' business was to expound them. 
Hence, we infer that the laws of the Mosaic dispensation on the subject 
of polygamy had always been such as Malachi declared them. He was 
but applying Moses' principles. 



294 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

To the assertion that the law of the Old Testament discountenanced 
polygamy as really as the New Testament, it has been objected that the 
practice was maintained by men too pious towards Grod to be capable of 
continuing in it against express precept ; as, for instance, by the " king 
after God's own heart," David. Did not he also commit murder and 
and adultery? Surely there is no question whether Moses forbids 
these ! The history of good men, alas ! shows us too plainly the power 
of general evil example, custom, temptation, and self-love, in blinding 
the honest conscience. It has been objected that polygamy was so uni- 
versally practised, and so prized, that Moses would never have dared to 
attempt its extinction. When will men learn that the author of the 
Old Testament law was not Moses, but G-od ? Is God timid 1 Does He 
fear to deal firmly with His creatures 1 But it is denied that there is 
any evidence that polygamy was greatly prevalent among the Hebrews. 
And nothing is easier than to show that, if it had been, Moses was a 
legislator bold enough to grapple with it. What more hardy than his 
dealing with the sabbatical year, with idolatry ? It is objected that 
the marriage of the widow who was childless to the brother of the de- 
ceased, to raise up seed to the dead, presents a case of polygamy actu- 
ally commanded. We reply, no one can show that the next of kin was 
permitted or required to form such marriage when he already had a 
wife. The celebrated J. D. Michaelis, a witness learned and not too 
favourable, says, in his Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, of this 
law, " Nor did it affect a brother having already a wife of his own." 
Book III, ch. vi, § 98. 

It is objected that polygamy is recognized as a permitted relation in 
Deut. xxi : 15-17, where the husband of a polygamous marriage is for- 
bidden to transfer the birthright from the eldest son to a younger, the 
child of a more favoured wife ; and in Exod. xxi : 9, 10, where the hus- 
band is forbidden to deprive a less favoured wife of her marital rights 
and maintenance. Both these cases are explained by the admitted 
principle, that there may be relations which it was sin to form, and 
which yet it is sinful to break when formed. No one doubts whether 
the New Testament makes polygamy unlawful; yet it seems very clear 
that the apostles gave the same instructions to the husbands of a plu- 
rality of wives entering the Christian Church. There appears, then, 
no evidence that polygamy was allowed in the laws of Moses. 

Sins against Seventh Commandment to be Rebuked with Sanc- 
tity. — A supposed obligation of propriety and delicacy has usually kept 
our pulpits silent concerning the sins of unchastity ; and hence, no doubt, 
in large part, the shocking callousness and unsoundness of public opin- 
ion concerning the sins of its breach. It is my opinion that this omis- 
sion should be corrected by the pastors. When I say this, I would not 
by any means be understood as encouraging ministers to disregard any 
sentiment of delicacy or propriety which may exist; On tbe contrary, 
all such sentiments, where not positively false, are to be honoured by 
him ; and he should be, in all his intercourse, the model of delicacy. 
But there is a guarded and holy way of discussing such subjects, which 
clearly reveals chastity, and not pruriency as its temper, and purity as 
its object. This is the style in which the pastor should speak on these 
difficult subjects. 

V. Scope of Eighth Commandment. — In discussing the Eighth 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 295 

Commandment, we proceed from the duties of chastity to those of com- 
mutativegustice. The scope of the command is to protect the rights of 
property. Under the simple head of "stealing" it "forbids whatsoever 
doth or may unjustly hinder our own, or our neighbour's wealth and 
outward estate ;" and "requireth the lawful procuring and further- 
ing of the wealth of ourselves and others." This exposition implies that 
there is a sense in which a man may steal from himself. While there 
is a sense in which our property belongs to us, and not to our neighbour, 
and his to him, and not to us ; yet we are all stewards of God, and in 
the higher sense, all property belongs to Him. Obviously then, God's 
property right may be as much outraged by our misuse of what is law- 
fully in our stewardship, as by interfering with another's trust. The 
forms in which the worldly estate of our neighbour may be wronged, are in- 
numerable. The essence of theft is in the violation of the golden Rule as 
to our neighbor's property. The essence of stealing is the obtaining 
our neighbour's goods without his intentional consent and without fair 
market value returned. However it may be done, whenever we get from 
our neighbour something for nothing, without his consent, there is 
theft. 

Special Sins and Duties under it. — This Commandment requires 
us, as to our own worldly estate, to practice such industry as will provide 
for ourselves and those dependent on us a decent subsistence — to es- 
chew idleness, which is a species of robbery practiced on the common 
hive by the drone; to avoid prodigality ; and to appropriate our own 
goods in due proportion to their proper uses. The Commandment, as 
it applies to our neighbour's wealth, forbids robbery, or forcible taking, 
theft, or taking by stealth, all swindling and getting of property by false 
pretences ; forestalling and regrating in times of scarcity ; wastefulness, 
tending to the greed for other's wealth, extortion, embezzlement of pub- 
lic wealth, fake measures and weights, contracting debts beyond the 
known ability to pay, eating usury, gambling, infidelity in working for 
wages, or in the quality of things manufactured for sale, availing ones- 
self of legal adcantayes for evading obligations morally binding, &c, &c. 

VI. Rig ht of Possession Whence. — But what is the origin of the moral 
right of possession f The sense oimeum and tunim is one of the earliest ra- 
tional ideas developed, and continues to be one of the strongest. But 
its ethical origin has been much debated. Some have reasoned that in 
a state of nature, it arose out of first possession. But is not priority in 
finding and possessing a natural object, a mere accident 1 And if 
men are naturally equal in rights, as these persons always assume, can 
it be that a mere accident determines the moral right? Some, therefore, 
desert this theory, and suppose that the right of possession in a state of 
nature, arises out of the expenditure of some labour on the object pos- 
sessed. This theory again, fails to account for many cases, where no 
labour is bestowed, and yet the right is perfect ; and it is moreover, un- 
reasonable. These futile surmises illustrate the folly and defect of a 
philosophy which insists on proceeding upon mere naturalistic grounds. 
These men leave out God, the most essential, and in a true sense, the 
most natural member of the theorem ; and they assume a ' state of na- 
ture,' in which no creature ever rightfully existed. No wonder, there- 
fore, that their solution is abortive. Now, the truth is, that there is 
bat one source for a right of property, creation, out of nothing; and con * 



296 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

sequently, but one natural proprietor, God the Maker. The only ra- 
tional solution of the existence of a right of property in man is also the 
scriptural one, that contained in the second and ninth chapters of Gene- 
sis, God's gift of the world and its contents to man, as His tenant. Our 
individual interests in the gift are, then, based on the golden Rule, and 
properly regulated in detail by the laws of civil society. 

VII. Usury, not Unlawful if Moderate. — -The question whether 
all usury, or hire for the use of money is not unrighteous, was much 
debated by mediaeval moralists. The usual argument against it was, 
that money, coin, had in it no power of increase. A box of coin, said 
these Scholastics, is not like a measure of corn, capable of germination 
and increase ; it is as barren, if left to itself, as the gravel of the Sa- 
hara. It is labour only (or nature) which multiplies values. Hence 
to exact hire for money is taking something for nothing— essential theft* 
And the legislation of Moses, which prohibited the taking of any usury 
from brother Hebrews, was misunderstood and then cited., to confirm 
their conclusion. 

If their premises were true, their conclusion would be valid. Money 
is not, in fact, fruitless, and utterly devoid of a power of reproduction* 
It is a mere illusion to compare the box of coin to a box of barren gravel. 
For money is the representative of values; it is its purchasing power, and 
not its metallic constitution as simple matter, which makes it money* 
Now values are reproductive. Capital has a true power of increase* 
The multiplication of values is by the combination of capital and labour* 
If labour fecundates capital, it is equally true^ that capital arms labour 
for success. Hence, it is just as fair that capital loaned should receive 
its just hire, as that labour should. 

It is interesting to notice that the Bible never commits itself to any 
erroneous philosophy, no matter how current among men. The He- 
brew laws, properly understood, do not condemn all usury as sinful. 
They permit taking reasonable usury from Gentiles, forbid it from their 
brethren. Nor was this permission as to Gentiles an expression of hos- 
tility towards them. The system of Moses harboured no such spirit; 
but taught the Hebrews to regard Gentiles (except the Amorites, &c.) 
as neighbours. On the contrary, the taking of a fair line for money 
lent, lawful and reasonable in itself, was only forbidden as to their He- 
brew brethren, as one instance of that special fraternity, and mutual 
help, which God enjoined on them as pensioners upon his land. The 
case stands on the same footing with the prohibition to glean the fields, 
to beat the olive groves, or to take up the sheaf casually dropped from 
the road. These things were exacted, as special contributions to their 
more needy brethren. The law of the case may be seen in Exod. xxii t 
25 ; Levit. xxv \ 36, 37 ; Deut. xxiii * 19, 20 ; Nehem. v : 8, &c. ; Matt, 
xxv : 27. 

VIII. Buying and Selling under the Law of Charity. — When 
we take advantage of the urgent necessities of our neighbour, in buy- 
ing or selling, we sin against both honesty and charity. If your neigh- 
bour is compelled by his wants to sell some commodity, for whatever he 
can get, that fact does not make that commodity worth less than the 
market price to you who buy it. If he is compelled to have some com- 
modity instantly, whatever it may cost him, that fact does not make it 
worth more than the. market price to you who seli it to.him. If there* 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 297 

fore, you take advantage of his necessity, to force him to sell you his 
goods for a less price than you yourself would give, if you could not 
take this advantage, you rob hini of the difference. And it is fraud 
committed under peculiarly base circumstances. For his necessity, in- 
stead of arousing your cupidity, ought to excite compassion. Instead 
of taking advantage of his necessities, you should charitably aid in re- 
lieving them. Such measures are excused, I know, by saying that he 
makes the bargain voluntarily, or that his necessity makes the price 
which you give him, actually worth to him individually, in his circum- 
stances, what he gave in exchange for it. To these heartless excuses 
there is one answer, which at a touch, exposes their worthlessness, "Do 
<anto others as ye would have they should do unto you." How would 
you like to have $<Mr necessity thus abused 1 And yet, how many men 
are there who watch, like harpies, for these opportunities to make what 
they ■call a good bargain. 



LECTUKE XXXIL 



SYLLABUS, 
SECOND TABLE— (Ninth and Tenth Commandments). 

1. What is the general scape of the Ninth Comi&andment, and what the duties 
Required, and sins forbidden under it? 

2. What is the ground of the d&ty of speaking truth, and how does its practical 
Importance appear ? 

3. Denae the sin of speaking evil of one^s neighbour, and argae. 

4. Is it ever lawful to deceive ? 

5. What is the scope and meaning •of the Tenth Commandment, aad what are 
the duties required, and sins forbidden i&nder it ? 

<6. What evidence of the divine mission of Moses, in the character of the Deca- 
dogue ? 

7. What doth every sin demand at the hands of God ? 

See on whole, Larger Catechism, que. 143-152. 

Ridgeiey's Divinitv, que. 143-152. 

Turrettin, Loc. XI, que. 20 to 23, and 26, 

Green's Lectures, 54 to 58. 

Calvim Inst., Bk. II, Ch. 8, § 47-51. 

I. Scope of Ninth Commandment. — "We hold that the general 
scope of tfoe Ninth Commandment is to enjoin the virtue of Truth. 
This precept "requireth the maintaining and promoting of truth be- 
tween man and man, and of our own and our neighbour's good name, 
especially in witness-bearing." It "forbiddeth whatsoever is prejudi- 
cial to truth, or injurious to our own or our neighbour's good name." 

II. Grounds of Duty of Veracity. — The duty of veffaoity is found- 
ed on tho nature and importance of Grod's will enjoining truth. Truth 



298 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

may be said to be the using of signs by which we express or assert any- 
thing, conformably to our belief of the real state of the thing spoken of. 

Only Real Communications Useful. — All the practical concerns 
of man's life are with the real state of things. Fictitious informations 
are, to us, naught, or worse than naught. They may fatally betray us 
into mistake ; they cannot be the grounds of any beneficial or successful 
action. On the real state of the markets depends the merchant's profits. 
On the real power of the medicine depends the physician's success and 
the sick man's restoration. On the real nature of vegetable laws de- 
pends the reward of the farmer's toil. In every conceivable concern of 
man it is truth, the communication which is in accordance with reality, 
that is useful. Accordingly our Maker has endued us with a mental 
appetite of which truth is the natural food. The statement on which 
we cannot rely gives no pleasure. True, another faculty than the un- 
derstanding, the fancy, finds its appropriate pleasure in fiction. But here 
also a tribute is paid to tne truth ; for in order that the fictitious may 
give any pleasure to the fancy, even, it must be truth-like. 

Knowledge chiefly Derived. — Now veracity is the observance of 
truth in our communications. Its importance appears from the fact that 
almost all man knows is derived frum communication. The whole value 
of the statements we receive is in their truth. If they are false they are 
naught, or worse than naught. The usefulnessof communicated knowledge 
to us, depends, therefore, wholly on our confidence in its truth. Every 
lie helps to destroy that confidence. Just so far as we perceive lies 
prevail, so far the value of communicated knowledge to us is destroyed. 
Should we reach that state when no trust could be put in the veracity 
of any fellow-man, all such knowledge would, to us, virtually, cease to 
exist. But to what a state would this reduce us 1 We proudly call 
the brutes dumb ; indicating that it is man's gift of speech mainly, 
which separates us from beasts. It is this which enables us to receive 
facts and ideas besides our own. The wise teach the ignorant. The 
skill of each generation does not die with it ; but is communicated to 
the next. Knowledge is handed down, until our generation finds itself 
endowed with the accumulated experience of all previous ones. It is 
this which makes our civilization. But if all reliance upon communi- 
cated knowledge is destroyed, we are reduced to a state of savage igno- 
rance, but little above that of the higher animals. We should know 
nothing but what we had ourselves seen and experienced ; because we 
could trust nothing else. Education would be impossible ; for how can 
knowledge be communicated when truth is banished 1 We must con- 
tinue to exist in that infantile ignorance in which the child begins life, 
except so far as our own unaided efforts might instruct us, at the cost 
of suffering and perhaps of destruction. The advance which each indi- 
vidual made in such a condition, would wholly die with him ; his son 
must begin life as he did, an ignorant savage, and run the same con- 
tracted round of puny, misdirected progress, and in his turn die, carry- 
ing all his knowledge to the grave with him. The latest generation 
would live in the same savage ignorance with the earliest. Religion 
would be as impossible as education ; and all its blessings and consola- 
tions equally unknown ; for religion cannot exist without trust. Each 
one of you would be an insulated, helpless, wretch, more completely 
deprived of society than the gregarious herds. He who deals in false- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 299 

hood does what in him lies to bring his race to this degraded and mis- 
erable state. Tf all men should be false like him, and in all their com- 
munications, this state would be actually reached. 

Ltes destroy Confidence. — It may be shown in another light that 
the liar is the enemy of God and man by considering the effect of his 
vice on our mutual confidence. The intercourse of human business is 
but a countless series of implied engagements. Unless we can trust 
the fidelity of those whom we must employ, co-operation is at an end. 
If you cannot trust the postman who contracts to carry^ your letters, the 
conductor who guides the vehicle in which you ride, the pilot who 
steers your ship, the agent who transacts your business, the cook who 
engages to dress your food, you can neither write, nor ride, nor sail, 
nor eat, nor conduct any trade. Government would be at an end, be- 
cause the ruler could not trust his agents and officers, and his power 
would be limited to his own presence. In short, if confidence is de- 
stroyed then all the bands which unite man with his fellow are loosed : 
each man must struggle on unaided by his fellows, as though he were 
the sole forlorn remnant of a perishing race. Confidence is as essential 
also, to all the social affections which shed happiness on the heart, as to 
the utilities of our outer life. It is the basis of friendship and love. 
To mistrust is to despise. To trust, to be trusted with unshaken faith, 
is the charm of domestic love. 

Falsehood upturns Affection. — Were there no truth then, every 
fellow-man would be your enemy; you would be insulated from your 
kind ; every social affection would take its flight from the earth. Man 
would be reduced to a solitary miserable savage, "whose hand would be 
against every man and every man's hand against him." Even the ani- 
mals must, in a certain sense, keep faith with each other, in order to 
make their gregariousness possible. Even savages must cultivate fidelity 
to truth within some narrow limits; or else the extermination of their 
scanty existence would speedily follow. 

Indeed the conditions of savage society are sufficient illustrations of 
my conclusions : for when you examine into the causes of its barbarism, 
when you detect why savages are, compared with civilized states, few, 
poor, wretched, insecure and unfurnished with all the blessings which 
ameliorate life, you perceive that it is because falsehood and unright- 
eousness have made trust, mutual aid, and instruction almost impossi- 
ble among them. They remain sucb, only because they cannot trust 
each other. Savagery is simply sin ; and most notably, the sin of lying. 

Truth in Order to all Morality. — Not only is veracity a virtue, 
but truth is, in a certain sense, the condition of all other virtues. 
Hence it is that in many places of the Bible truth is almost synony- 
mous with righteousness. The "man that doeth truth" is the man that 
does his duty. The godly man is " he that speaketh the truth in his 
hear)." To "execute the judgment of truth" is to execute righteous 
judgment. This language is profoundly accurate. The motive of every 
act which has moral quality must be a reasonable one ; and truth, as 
we know, is the appointed light of the understanding. I mean that no 
man does a truly virtuous act unless he has an intelligent reason for 
doing it. But how can the mind see a reason unless it finds it in some 
truth ? Consider, farther, that all the inducements to right actions are 
in the truth ; but all the inducements to wrons: acts are false. Error 



300 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

and sin are kindred evils, as truth and holiness are handmaid and mis- 
tress. Truth is the instrument by which the Holy Ghost sanctifies the 
soul. John xvii : 17. Thus we find its most exalted value in this, that 
it is the means of redemption for a ruined world. It is as beneficent 
as falsehood is mischievous. The one is our guide to heaven ; the 
other leads to hell. 

There is a world just such as the liar would make this : where false- 
hood reigns and where confidence is unknown. There, in its fiery lake, 
all liars have their part. The ruler of this world is he who c< was a 
liar from the beginning and the Father of it." There to deceive 
and be deceived is the universal rule, and therefore mistrust sits brood- 
ing over every heart, and scowls in every look. Each one beholds in 
every other an object of fear and seorn, and feels an equal seorn for 
himself, because he knows himself as false as they. In the midst of 
myriads each suffering heart is alone, for it fines no other breast on 
which it can repose. Hostility and solitude separate each wretch from 
his fellows, and the only society is the reciprocations of reproaches and 
injuries. Hell is but the complete and universal reign of falsehood, 
and the tendency of ©very lie is to reduce our world to it. (Truth the 
foundation of rectitude, &c, Jas. 3 : 2.) 

God's Perfection and Command the Ground of Duty. — But do 
not suppose that I leave the obligation of veracity resting only on util- 
ity. It has a broader and deeper foundation in the nature and will of 
that God who cannot lie. He is " the Lord God of truth." See Ps. 
c : 5. Every "liar is abomination in His sight." He requires us to 
honour Him by the truth, and teaches us that this virtue makes us His 
children. 

III. Evil Speaking, What ? — The sin of slander, or backbiting, 
where the assertions of evil in our neighbour are false, is understood. 
Its malignity is great, as it assails him in a point very dear to him — 
his good name — and is usually attended with vile adjuncts of secresy 
and treachery. Jas. iii : 6, 7. But it is not so well understood that it 
is often a sin of evil speaking to repeat true accusations against our 
neighbour. There are times when the cause of virtue demands that 
ill-conduct shall be denounced. And when such occasions arise, the 
virtuous man will not be afraid to speak out. But it is a sin against 
our erring neighbour to give unnecessary currency to his faults. 
"Charity rejoiceth not in iniquity. " The fact that our neighbour has 
truly sinned does not place him outside the pale of charity, nor does it 
entitle us to inflict on him any unnecessary injury or pain. Moreover, 
the recital of evil, true or false, has a natural tendency to familiarize 
the soul with it, to defile the memory and imagination, and to habit- 
uate the mind and conscience to wrong. It is, especially to the young, 
a real misfortune to have to hear of that which is morally fouL This 
mischief should never be causelessly wrought by detailing sins, no mat- 
ter how true, without necessity. 

IV. Abe all Deceptions Lies? Negative Argument. — Many 
Christian moralists have held that there are intentional deceptions 
which are not breaches of the ninth commandment, and are innocent in 
God's sight. They describe these, as the cases where the person de- 
ceived had no right to know; and where the result of the deception 
was righteous and beneficial ; as when a robber or murderer is misled 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 301 

away from his victim by an innocent deception ; or where a defensive 
army deceives an invader by strategems. Their arguments are chiefly 
these: that the parties deceived, in such cases, being engaged in a 
wicked design, have no right to the benefits of veracity as between man 
and man : That the best men, as Joshua, Washington, &c, when com- 
manders of armies, made adroit use of stratagems ; and the common 
conscience of mankind approves, and would count it morbid conscience 
and insane quixotry to refuse such means of defence : That many in- 
stances are recorded, of Bible saints as Abraham, Moses, Joshua, &c, 
who prosperously employed concealments and stratagems, (see for in- 
stance, Joshua, viii : 3, &c.,) and that there are even cases in which 
God or Christ seems to do the same, as in the assumption of a human 
body, Gen. xviii : 2, in the walk to Emmaus, Luke xxiv : 28. They 
add, also, that the consistent enforcement of the opposite doctrine would 
many times be suicidal and preposterous. 

Affirmative Argument. — There are however, those who hold that 
absolutely " no lie is of the truth. " They admit, indeed, that it is a 
man's privilege, where no right exists, to demand information of him, 
to keep silence, or use concealment. But they assert that, if he employs 
any signs by which it is usually understood information is conveyed, he 
must employ them absolutely according to reality; and that in no case 
can he intentionally produce a deception, without the sin of lying. 
They argue, in general, that the opposite license proceeds upon a utili- 
tarian theory of obligation. But this theory is false , and as no finite 
mind can correctly judge the whole utility or hurtfulness of a given 
declaration in its ulterior consequences, no practical basis or rule of ob- 
ligation would be left at all. To the instances of deception in war, by 
great patriots, and their approval by the world, they reply, that good 
men are imperfect, and commit errors; and that the public conscience 
is unhealthy. To the instances of Bible-saints, they say, with justice, 
that often the errors of good men are recorded for our instruction, 
when they are by no means sanctioned. As to the instances claimed, 
from the acts of the Messiah, concealment is not deception ; His ap- 
pearance in human form, without at first disclosing His divinity, was not 
SLSuggestio falsi, but only a concealment of His nature until the suitable 
time. So, His seeming to design a journey farther than Emmaus was 
a mere question propounded to the two disciples. As to the inconve- 
niences of absolute truth, sometimes extreme, they point to the obliga- 
tions laid upon the martyrs, and remind us, that it is no rare thing for 
Christ to require of us obedience rather than life. In fine, they urge 
that, on any other ground than theirs, no tenable or consistent rule re- 
mains ; and we have a mere ' point of honour' requiring us to speak 
truth under certain contingencies, instead of a fixed rule of moral ob- 
ligation. 

Solution. — It must be confessed, that the reasons of the latter party 
are more honorable to the divine authority, and more elevating and 
safe, than those of the former. Yet, I would modestly suggest, in dis- 
missing this difficult question, that there may be a partial reconcilia- 
tion of the difficulties here : Are there not extreme forms of aggres- 
sion, aiming expressly at the destruction of the innocent object, and so 
clearly unprovoked, as to put the assailant, for the time being, out of 
the pale of human rights? Such ia the case in those assaults where the 



302 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

right of self-defence emerges, and the innocent man righteously kills 
the assailant. It may be asked with much force : has this outlaw for 
the time being, a right to truth, after he has forfeited the right to ex- 
istence 1 Does not the greater forfeiture include the less ? Is he not, 
pro tempore, in the category of a beast of prey 1 But the moment he 
is disabled from aggression or turns to a better mind, his rights to truth 
revive, as do his claims on our charity and forbearance. Hence, while 
the good man will righteously deceive his invading enemy with strata- 
gems, the moment a flag of truce appears, or his enemy is disabled and 
captured, he is bound to act with as perfect sincerity as towards his 
bosom friend. I would add, in guarding this concession, that if an in- 
nocent man makes a vow, promise, or engagement to his unrighteous 
assailant, under whatever violent threat, or other inducement, he is 
bound to the faithful performance of that engagement, unless the 
thing promised is sin per se. For the engagement was voluntary ; he 
had the option of choosing to make it or endure the threatened evil. 
The good man is one who " sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth 
not." Ps. xv: 4. 

V. Popish Division of 10th Commandment. — Rome, as we saw, hav- 
ing suppressed the 2nd Commandment, divides the 10th in order to 
make out the requisite number. Her 9th Commandment is, "Thou 
shalt not covet thy neighbor's house;" and her 10th, "Neither shalt 
thou desire his wife," &c. Her plea is, that houses are typical of pro- 
perty ; and wives of those things which excite sensual desire. The 9th 
Commandment, therefore forbids covetousness ; the 10th, lust and appe- 
tite. Bat unfortunately, the " ox and ass," obvious "property" are in 
the latter part ; and in Deut. v : 21, where Moses recites the Decalogue 
literally, he puts the wife first, and the property second. The general 
unity of the subject, besides, proves that it was one command. 

Its Scope. — It may be said, in brief, that this command finds the 
keynote of its exposition in the text: " Keep thy heart with all dili- 
gence; for out of it are the issues of life." The five commands of the 
second table cut off the streams of transgression ; this deals with the 
fountain head. The other? forbid wrong volitions; this forbids concu- 
piscence, as tending thereto. In the 10th Commandment, then, we have 
the crowning spirituality of the Law; thus making it complete, and 
every way worthy of Grod, and adapted to man as a rational free agent. 

VI. Decalogue only from God. — In closing this subject I would 
offer two remarks. The first is upon the admirable comprehension, 
wisdom, and method of the Decalogue. We have^ here ten simple and 
brief precepts, each one commending itself to the natural conscience 
of the most unlearned, simple in word, few in number, unosten- 
tatious in arrangement. When we first look at them, we are in- 
clined to think that, while they are very true and good, there is nothing 
very wonderful ; that they are obvious things which any good man might 
utter, and to a much greater number than ten. But when we examine them 
in detail, we find that they are the heads of all the branches of man's 
duty, arranged with the most logical order, presenting nothing super- 
fluous, and yet, with all their brevity, omitting nothing of all the vast 
circle of human duty! How clear their purity and justice ! How 
amazing their comprehension ! What completeness! Let human in- 
genuity hunt out some branch of human duty which is omitted. It 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 80S 

cannot. In these ten words, we have a system of morality more wise 
and complete than human wisdom ever devised. Now, we ask, whence 
did Moses get these ten words 1 A man of an unlearned and pastoral 
race, educated in the learned follies of Egypt, whose theology and mo- 
rals, as they are revealed to us by Herodotus and the modern decy- 
pherers of their monuments, show an impurity and puerility utterly 
opposite to the Bible, goes into a waste desert, and after forty years, 
comes forth with this strangely wise and perfect law ! Whence did he 
get it? There is but one rational account— that given by the Bible — ■ 
that it was written for him by the finger of God, Unless Moses 
was an inspired man, then he has produced a miracle of wisdom 
more incredible than all the difficulties of inspiration. 

VII. What does every Sin Deserve. — Our Catechism, while recog- 
nizing the greater gravity of some sins than others, by reason of their 
aggravations, teaches us that, "Every sin deserveth God's wrath and 
curse, both in this life and that which is to come." The exceeding de- 
merit of sin, and its desert of eternal and grievous punishment is a doc- 
trine which meets with obstinate resistance from sinners. It is urged 
that to make the desert of any sin such is to revive the old Stoic ab- 
surdity, of the equality of all sins . for if the lesser sin is punished eter- 
nally, and so infinitely, the greater cannot be punished more. The an- 
swer is, that infinities are by no means all equal ; as we have shown. 

To clear this awful truth of the desert of sin, from the cavils of un- 
belief, I would observe, first, that sinful men are in a most unlikely 
attitude to judge correctly between themselves and God, in this matter. 
They naturally desire to break the law. Our emotions always blind 
the judgment to the objects which are opposed to their current. They 
are condemned by the law of God, which fact produces a natural jeal- 
ousy of it. They have their moral judgments brutified by the univer- 
sal habitude and example of sinning, amidst which they live. It would 
be almost a miracle, if there were not, under these circumstances, a per- 
version of the moral judgments here. 

Grounds. — But affirmatively the ill-desert of sin is infinite, because 
of the excellence, universality, and practical value of the law broken by 
it. Because of the natural mischievousness of sin to the sinner himself; 
as was illustrated when I spoke of Adam's first transgression. Because 
of the Majesty and perfections of the Law-giver assailed by transgres- 
sion. Because sin is committed against mercies and blessings so great. 
Because it violates so perfect a title to our services, that of creation 
out of nothing. And last, because it is so continually multiplied by 
transgressors. 



PART II. 



LECTURE XXXV. 



SYLLABUS. 

THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 

"What the use of the words, birith and diathekb? The meaning of Terms 
" Covenant of Grace," "Covenant of Redemption ?" How related to the Gospel ? 
Conf. of Faith, Ch. vii. Lexicon's sub voc. Sampson on Hebrews, ix : 
15, 16. Hill's Div., Bk. v, Ch. v, § 1. Turrettin Loc. xii, Que. 1. Dick. 
Lect. 48. 

2. Prove the existence of a Covenant of Redemption. How related to the 
Covenant of Grace, and diathekai ? 

Turrettin, Que. 2, § 13, 14, Dick. Lect. 48. Scriptures, e. g., Ps. ii : 6, 7. 
Isaiah, xlii : 6, xlix : 6, liii : 10. John x ; 18, iii : 16, xvii : 4-6. Eph. i : 
4. Heb. x : 5. 

3. Who are the original parties ? Explain in what sense, and for whom Christ 
acts as surety. What the motives of the parties f 

Turrettin, as above, § 9-12. Dick. Lect. 48. Turrettin, as above, § 6 
and 16. 

4. What the conditions bargained between the parties ? Is any condition 
enjoined on man? If so, what ? Faith? Repentance? 

Turrettin, as above, § 17-20. Dick. Lect. 48. Turrettin, Que. 3. 

5. What the date and duration of the Covenant of Redemption ? Explain, 
then, the terms, " New" and "Old " in Heb. viii ; 8, or xii : 24. 

Turrettin, Que. 2, § 15. Hodge on 1 Cor., xv : 24-28. Dick., as above. 

1. Covenant of Grace God's Remedy. — God having created man up- 
right, and he having sought out many inventions, and thus fallen into 
sin ; our next inquiry must be into the remedy which God's love and 
mercy found for this fall. This remedy, in its exhibition, was of course 
subsequent to the ruin; but when we consider it in its inception in the 
Divine mind, we must go back into the recesses of a past eternity. 
God ever foreknew all things ; and all His works, unto the end, are 
according to His original, eternal plan. Conceiving of God's eternal 
decree then in parts, (the only mode of conception of it competent to 
our finite minds,) we must consider that part of His plan formed from 
eternity, which was implied in that other part of the same plan where- 
by He purposed to permit man's fall and ruin. This remedial part of 
God's decree is the thing which the more recent Calvinistic divines term 
the Covenant of Grace — e. g., Dick. 

Identical with Decree. — When it is thus considered, as a part of 
the Decree, we are enabled to condense much of the discussion and 
proof concerning it, given by the theologians; and to say in brief: 
that being such, the Covenant of Grace must of course possess those 
general properties which we asserted of the Decree ; and for the same 
reasons, viz., eternity, immutability, wisdom, freeness, absoluteness, gra- 
ciousness. 



2 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

2. In what respects a Covenant. — If there is any gospel remedy 
for sin, then there must have been, from eternity, such a remedial plan 
in the Divine mind. But the question is, was this part of the eternal 
decree, in any proper sense a covenant ? Has it properly the form of 
an eternal compact between persons of the trinity ? This is purely a 
question of Revelation, to be decided not so much by finding the words, 
covenant, compact, agreement, applied to it in Scripture, as the sub- 
stance of the thing asserted. Calvinists hold that in the one, eternal 
decree of the Trinity, which is one in essence and attributes, and har- 
monious in will and thought, this remedial purpose (or part of the 
plan) has from eternity held the form of a concert or agreement between 
the Father and the Son, for the redemption of believers. But here 
we must carefully avoid confusing the subject, by giving to this im- 
manent transaction of the Trinity all the technical features of a "cov- 
nant." Thus many divines have erred, especially of the Cocceian schooL 
Obviously, we must not conceive of it, as though the one party pro- 
duced in the other a willingness to do what he had not previously 
purposed, by exhibiting a certain reward or compensation, not before 
exhibited. Nor must we conceive that the second party produces, by 
his fulfilment of the conditions, a fixed purpose to bestow the given 
compensation, the purpose to do so having been hitherto uncertain. 
Nor, in a word, that there is any contingency on either hand, holding 
the purposes of either party suspended in doubt on the promisings or 
doings of the other party. But it has always been certain from eter- 
nity, that the conditions would be performed ; and the consequent re- 
ward would be bestowed, because there has always been an ineffable 
and perfect accord in the persons of the Trinity, on those points; an 
accord possessing all the absoluteness of the other parts of the decree. 
Our limited understandings, of course, cannot fully understand the 
actings of the divine, triune spirit ; seeing its constitution is inscrutable 
to us. This is perhaps as near as we ean come to the conception de- 
signed to be given us. 

Scriptural Proofs of a Covenant of Redemption — The Scrip- 
tural proof of such an immanent, eternal transaction between the 
Father and Son, is the following : First. Inferentially, Eternal life 
was not only purposed to be bestowed, but, "promised, before the 
world began " — Tit. i : 2. To whom ? for man did not yet exist ? To 
Christ, for believers. Compare Eph. i : 4. Again: Christ is clearly 
implied to bear a federal relationship; as in 1 Cor. xv. 22, 47,45. 
Our first federal head entered into covenant on our behalf; we infer 
that our second has ; he would else not fulfil the idea of a federal per- 
son at all. Again: Christ is expressly called the Surety of a dia- 
theke. Heb. vii: 22. But a surety is one who voluntarily enters under 
the obligations of a compact on behalf of another. Many other pas- 
sages would ground a similar inference ; the student has now had suffi- 
cient examples how to use them. Note all conditional promises : To 
believers, to Christ. These are of nature of covenants. 

Second. Many express passages describe (not always in the use of 
word covenant et similia, but in substance) such an eternal agreement- 
See Is. xlii : 6, xlix : 8 ; Mai. iii : 1 ; especially Ps. xl : 7, 8, as quoted 
by Heb. x: 5. This Covenant of Christ is unfolded by other Scrip- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 3 

tures under the specific heads of his three offices — e. g., Prophetic. 
Is. lxi: 1, 2. Priestly. Isaiah, liii: 10,11; Ps. ex : 4; John, x: 17, 
18. Kingly. Ps. ii: 7, 8, ex: 6; Luke, xxii : 29, &c. 

3. Scripture use of Terms. — Such are the evidences on which we 
assert this secret of the eternal mind ! When we come to the Scrip- 
tures, we find a frequent use of the words rendered in our English ver- 
sion, ' Covenant,' ' Testament,' applied to transactions of God with men, 
through their Surety, Jesus Christ; whence another group of proofs. 
Before we can proceed farther in the connected evolution of the sub- 
J3ct, the proper meaning of these terms must be examined ; birith dia- 
theke. The former of these words, both by its etymology and usage, 
is shown to mean 'covenant,' or 'agreement ;' being often used to express 
theologically, God's covenants with man, and naturally, compacts be- 
tween individuals. There are also cases in which it means an arrange- 
ment or disposition of matters determined on. Exod. xxxiv : 28. 
Jer. xxxiii : 20. It must be remarked, that the word currently used 
by the Sept. to render this, is diatheke. This fact would naturally 
lead us to attribute to it in the New Testament, the same meaning of 
disposition or covenant. It is admitted that the meaning so often given 
to it by our English version of ' testament,' (will,) is the primary ety- 
mological meaning in classic Greek. But there is only one case, (Heb. 
ix : 16,) where that meaning is supportable. Thus, when Christ is said 
by the English version to be " a surety of a better testament," (Heb. 
vii : 22,) there is an obvious incongruity between the office and the doc- 
ument. Wills do not have sureties. When the same version says, 
(1 Cor. xi: 25,) "This is my blood of the New Testament," the words 
kames diatheke imply the Old, to which the character of a testament is 
inappropriate. But in Heb. ix: 16, 17, the meaning of ' Testament' is 
to be retained, (against McKnight, Hill and others.) For, if their 
rendering be attempted, making the passage allusive to a covenant rati- 
fied by an animal sacrifice, three insuperable critical difficulties arise, 
that if diatheke means covenant, diatheminon should mean the 
"covenanter," i. e., God the Father, (Christ being the ratifying sacri- 
fice.) But the Father did not die; that nekros cannot be properly 
used to describe dead animals sacrificed : and that the passage would 
then be made to assert too much ; for it is not universally true, that 
compacts were only of force anciently, after the death of a sacrifice to 
solemnize them. (See Sampson's Com. in loco.) Hence we assert that 
the statement of our Confession of Faith is substantially correct, that 
the Scripture does set forth the dispensation of God's grace to man 
under the idea of "a testament;" though perhaps not "often," as is 
said there. Their assertion refers to the English version. 

The terms are used then, in their general or theological sense. 1st, 
by Theologians, and probably by Scripture, (Hos. vi : 7,) for the Cove- 
nant of works with Adam. 2nd, for the Abrahamic dispensation. 
3rd, for the Mosaic dispensation. 4tb, for the new or Christian dispen- 
sation. (Not covenants, but dispensations ; for we shall show that there 
is only one covenant, besides that of works.) 

4. Dispensations, how Belated to the Covenant. — The relation 
between these diathekai, and the eternal Covenant of Kedemption 
between the Father and the Son, may, we flatter ourselves, be now 



SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

made intelligible. This is, substantially and efficaciously, the covenant 
transaction, the forming of it bearing no relation to time ; those are 
the exhibitions of the transaction, through the Surety, to the human 
beings interested in it, made with successive degrees of clearness, in 
time. The transaction, as it is between the Trinity, is one and eternal ; 
its exhibitions to man have been in time and successive, and have varied 
in their accessaries. It must be remarked, that the Confession of Faith, 
and the older divines, such as Turrettin, apply the words " Covenant of 
Grace" to the dispensations of promise made by God to man, in and 
through the agreement of the Father and Son. Such an application is 
proper and necessary ; for the fact is, that God has proposed to His 
people in all ages, a covenant of promise, under different dispensations, 
in which He transacts with men, through a Mediator indeed, yet with 
men, as parties. This different use of the phrase, however, implies no 
difference of view. Doubtless Turrettin and the Westminster Assem- 
bly would assent to the substance of all which Dick has said, in apply- 
ing the phrase to the original compact of Father and Son. This dis- 
tinction between the original compact and its dispensations to men, is 
useful and proper, as giving greater comprehension and clearness. 

Is the Covenant of Redemption to be distinguished from the 
Covenant of Grace? — If, now, the question be raised whether there 
is a Covenant of Redemption with the Mediator, distinguishable from 
the Covenant of Grace with man, the answer will be plain. There is 
no such covenant distinguishable from the Covenant of Grace, in the 
sense of being two independent transactions. The latter is but the 
exhibition to man of the former. In the gospel dispensations, God 
only covenants with men in and through the Mediator, as their federal 
head ; and in the sole terms of the original compact made with Him. 
But there is a difference, as the publication of the offers of grace to 
Christ's people differs from the original purpose of grace through 
Christ. When the Confession speaks of the Covenant of Grace, it is 
in the latter aspect. We shall be compelled to use the term thus also — *. 
Refuse the distinction, as Dick does, and you run into contradictions. 
Is the Covenant conditioned, or unconditioned? It is impossible for 
Dick to answer this question truly, unless he resorts to the distinction 
which he has repudiated. If you speak of the Covenant of Redemp- 
tion, the answer is, yes ; if of the Covenant of Grace, the answer is, no. 
In the former, Christ fulfils the efficacious condition ; in the latter, man 
fulfils an instrumental condition only. 

5. Original Parties to the Covenant.— The original parties to 
the Covenant of Redemption are the Father and the Son. It is plau- 
sibly urged by Dick, that in this transaction, the Father acted not only 
for himself, as one person of the Trinity, but for the whole Godhead, 
as representative of the offended majesty of the three persons equally. 
His reason is, that all the persons being similar in attributes and dig- 
nity, must be conceived of as all alike offended by man's sin and guilt ; 
and alike demanding the reconciling intervention of a Daysman : the 
Holy Ghost as much as the Father. It must be confessed that Dick 

*See lucid remarks of Turrettin. Ques. 2, § 12. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 5 

cannot present any scriptural, direct proof of this view ; but it seems 
reasonable. The Father on the one part, then, acts as the representa- 
tive of the G-odhead ; Christ as the representative "of the elect. The 
question is raised by Dick: Is Christ surety for man to God only, or 
for God also to believers ? He answers, not for Cod to believers ; be- 
cause this is derogatory to Cod, as implying that his fidelity and mercy 
need or admit of any higher warrant than his own word. (But see Tur- 
rettin, Loc. cit. §16.) Does not Cod make known his fidelity as a 
promiser of pardon and life, and his mercy, precisely through this 
surety, as the prophet of the Covenant 1 Would man be any otherwise 
warranted to hope for any mercy ] Further, the fact that Cod's good- 
ness to us needs and admits of any certifying by a surety, results from 
nothing discreditable to Cod, but from something discreditable to us — 
our guilty mistrust. That Cod, who deserves to be trusted on his mere 
word, should condescend to give us warranty of his fidelity in the mes- 
sages, death and sacraments of his Son ; this is his amazing grace and 
goodness. (See 1 Tim. i: 16.) And are not the sacraments seals? 
Does not Christ in them act as surety for Cod to us 1 

To the question whether believers are also parties in the Covenant of 
Crace, no better answer can be given than that of Turrettin, § 12. In 
the eternal sense of the Covenant, they were not parties ; in the sense 
of its exhibitions in time, they are parties ; i. e., in their surety. 

6. The Covenant Eternal. — The Covenant of Redemption being, 
as regards the Father and the Son, but a part of the single Decree, must 
be as eternal as that Decree. It began in the counsels of a past eter- 
nity : and in one sense, its administration will extend (if not in the 
mediatorial offices of the Surety, at least in the communications of 
grace,) to a future eternity. In proof of its eternity, see Heb. xiii : 
20 ; 1 Pet. i : 20. Hence the Covenant can only be one ; and therefore 
it can only be spoken of as "first," " second" (e. g., Heb. viii : 7,) or 
" old," " new," (as Heb. viii : 8 ; xii : 24,) with reference to its forms of 
manifestation. 

7. Motives of Cod to the Covenant. The Father not per- 
suaded by the Son to it. — Having considered the Codhead (repre- 
sented in the Father,) and Christ, as the original parties to this cove- 
nant, the question naturally arises : What motive prompted them to 
this dispensation of amazing love and mercy ? The only consistent 
answer is : their own will, moved by their own intrinsic benevolence, 
compassion, and other attributes. To this agree all the passages of 
Scripture which describe Cod's electing love as free and unprocured, 
by any thing in man ; (Rom ix : 11, 16,) because our election is but 
the embracing of us in the Covenant of Grace. Eph. i: 4. This is 
equally substantiated by the argument that God could not be moved by 
foreseen good in us, to embrace us in this covenant ; because the only 
foreseen good in us was that which was to result from the administra- 
tion of the grace of that very covenant. It cannot be said that man's 
misery was more than the occasion of God's purpose in forming this 
Covenant of Grace; for if we supposed it the procuring, or efficient 
cause, the misery of non-elect men and angels ought equally to have 
procured a Covenant of Crace towards them also. 

Some have misrepresented the truth hereupon by teaching that 



6 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Christ's undertaking to satisfy the law in man's stead is the procuring 
cause of God's purpose of mercy towards man. The error of this view 
is evident from this consideration that then, Christ would be originally 
more benevolent and merciful than the Father. But they are equal 
and harmonious originally, in this, as in all other excellencies. The 
true statement is, that Christ's promise of a vicarious atonement was 
necessary to enable the Father's purpose of mercy to be effectuated 
consistently with other attributes — that purpose being precisely as ori- 
ginal and uncaused in the Father as in the Son. 

8. Conditions pledged by Christ — just what man owed. 1st. 
Obedience. — Dick (Lee. 49,) has very happily simplified the question, 
" What were the conditions bargained by the Son to the Godhead, on 
behalf of His people?" by considering Him as placed precisely in His 
people's room and stead. He bargained to do precisely what they 
should have done, to supply precisely "their lack of service." The 
intrinsic righteousness of the rules imposed on man in the Covenant of 
Works, as being precisely what they ought to have been ; and the 
immutability of God's nature, show that whoever came forward to be 
their surety, must expect to have to undertake precisely what was in- 
cumbent on them in that covenant. The first part of this obligation 
was to a life of perfect obedience. This life Christ rendered. (See 
e. g. Matt, xvii : 5.) A class of theologians has rejected the idea that 
Christ's active obedience was vicarious, and is imputed to His people. 
While this question will come up more naturally when we discuss the 
subjects of Atonement and Justification, we may briefly remark of it 
now, that the consideration above offered is obviously in favour of the 
Calvinistic view. Besides ; when the Messiah is represented as saying, 
"A body hast thou prepared me," &c, (Ps. xl : 6, 8, quoted ; Heb. x : 
5, 10,) it is surely a very contracted and perverse interpretation, to 
suppose that He was clothed with humanity only with reference to one 
and the last act of His humanity ; and that the general phrase, " I 
come to do Thy will," is to be understood only of the single act of 
of offering His flesh. (See also Gal. iv : 4 and 5. 

2nd. Penalty. — But man, while still bound to perpetual obedience, 
has already come under penalty, by failing to render it. Hence, our 
Surety bargained to bear that penalty in His people's stead. This can- 
not be more clearly stated than in the language of Is. liii : 5, 6 ; 2 
Cor. v: 21. Some have supposed that there is an incompatibility be- 
tween the first and second condition : that if the penalty for a 
neglected obedience is paid, law has no longer any claim for that obe- 
dience. This represents the relation between the law and penalty, 
erroneously. God does not accept the penalty as an equivalent for obe- 
dience, in the sense that either the one or the other satisfies the demands 
of the Law and of his nature alike well. Look at this ! His relation 
to His rational creatures demand of them, by an inevitable and perpet- 
ual demand, perfect obedience ; and if that fails, penalty also. But 
waiving this, does not the believer (having paid for his past delinquency 
by his surety,) owe a perpetual and perfect obedience for the future f 
And can he render it in the flesh? Hence his surety must render it 
for him, as well as pay the penalty. 

3d. The Offices of Mediator. — In the third place, we may say 



[OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 7 

scripturally, that Christ bargained, among all other compliances with 
His Father's will, to do as Mediator, all those things pertaining to His 
prophetic and kingly offices, necessary on His part, to the salvation of 
the elect. He undertook their instruction, guidance, protection and 
conquest to Himself. Weigh John xvii : 12-14, for instance, where our 
Saviour speaks of His agency in instructing and guiding His disciples as 
of a fulfilled compact. (See also, Ps. xxii : 22.) 

Conditions pledged by the Father. — Passing now to the other 
side of the compact, we may say that the Godhead, represented in the 
Father, engaged on His side, to the Son, to clothe Him with humanity 
for the fulfilment of His task, (Ps. xl : 6,) and to endue Christ plente- 
ously with gifts and graces therefor, (Is. xlix : 2; lxi : 2,) to uphold 
Him under His heavy task, (Is. xlii : 1, 5,) to give Him an elect seed as 
the sure reward of His labours, (Is. xlix: 6; liii : 10,) and to bestow 
His royal exaltation, with all its features of glory. (Ps. ii : 6 ; Phil, 
ii : 9, 10.) As there is a secondary sense, in which God, in unfolding 
His eternal Covenant of Grace, bargains with man, so there is a sense 
in which there are conditions proposed between God and believers also. 
It may be remarked in general, that there is a sense in which a part of 
the benefits promised to Christ are promised through Him also to His 
people ; and a part of the blessings covenanted to them, are honours 
and rewards to Him. Thus His mediatorial graces are their gain: and 
their redemption is His glory. Hence, this division between benefits 
covenanted to His people, and those covenanted to Christ, cannot be 
sharply carried out. 

9. Instrumental Condition Required of Men. — When we consider 
the covenant as between God and believers, however, it is evident that 
there are conditions bargained between them. These conditions may 
be found briefly expressed in the words so often repeated, and obviously 
intended to be so significant in scriptures ; Gen. xvii : 7 ; Jer. xxxi : 33 ; 
Rev. xxi : 3 ; "I will be their God, and they shall be My people." 
In this covenant God briefly bargains, on His part, to be reconciled to 
believers, and to communicate Himself to them as their guide, light, 
consolation, and chief good. They, on their part, are held bound to 
the correlative reconciliation, grounding their weapons of rebellion and 
exercising the spirit of adoption, to a life of self-consecration and obe- 
dience, to separation from the world of His enemies, and conformity of 
heart and life to God's will. It is true that the transaction of Gen. 
17th is rather ecclesiastical than spiritual; but the spiritual is always 
included and represented in the outward. 

Faith the only Condition. — The question then arises, whether all 
the graces and duties of the Christian life may be accounted as condi- 
tions of the Covenant of Grace. If so, is it not reduced again to 
another Covenant of Works 1 The answer is, that it is only in a very 
slight, and improper sense, the Christian's holy life can be called a condi- 
tion of his share in grace — only as in the order of sequence it is true 
that a holy life on earth must precede a complete redemption in heaven. 
So far is it from being true that this holy life is in any sense a merito- 
rious condition of receiving grace, or a procuring cause, it is itself the 
fruit and result of grace. But when we examine more minutely the 
account of that gracious transaction in the Scriptures shadowed forth 



8 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

in the ecclesiastical transaction of Gen. 1 7th, and stated first more 
simply in Gen. 15th, we find that Abraham's faith only was imputed to 
him for righteousness. Gen. xv : 6 ; Rom. iv : 9, 10, &c. This effec- 
tually explains the matter. The argument in favour of the position we 
have assumed, is sufficiently strengthened by adding that all graces and 
holy living are everywhere spoken of by God, and sought by Bible 
saints in prayer, as God's gifts bestowed as the fruit of the Covenant 
of Grace. Citations are needless. 

May Faith be properly called a condition. — The question has 
been keenly agitated between Calvinists, whether Faith itself should be 
spoken of as a condition of the covenant. One party has denied it, be- 
cause they supposed that the language which represented man as per- 
forming a condition of his own salvation would make an inlet for human 
merit. But it is most manifest that there is a sense in which Faith is 
the condition in all such passages as John iii: 16; Acts viii: 37; John 
xi: 26; Mark xvi : 16. No human wit can evade the fact that here 
God proposes to man a something for him to do, which, if done, will 
secure redemption ; if neglected, will ensure damnation — and that some- 
thing is in one sense a condition. But of what kind f Paul everywhere 
contrasts the condition of works,[and the condition of faith. This con- 
trast will be sufficiently established, and all danger of human merits 
being intruded will be obviated, if it be observed that Faith is only 
the appointed instrument for receiving free grace purchased by our 
Surety. It owes its organic virtue as such, to God's mere appointment, 
not to the virtue of its own nature. Tn the Covenant of Works, the 
fulfilment of the condition on man's part earned the result, justification 
by its proper moral merit. In the Covenant of Grace, the condition 
has no moral merit to earn the promised grace, being merely an act of 
receptivity. In the Covenant of Works, man was required to fulfil the 
condition in his own strength. In the Covenant of Grace, strength is 
given to him to believe, from God. 

No other Condition. Evasions. — The question now remains, 
whether, in this instrumental sense, any thing else besides faith is a 
condition of the Covenant of Grace. (See Cat. Ques. 33.) " Received 
by faith alone." There are two evasions: one that which makes Re- 
pentance a condition along with faith. Luke xiii : 3; Actsii: 38, &c» 
Contrast with Jno. iii : 16-18 ; Acts xvi : 30, 31. The other is the one 
common to Papists, (meritum congruum of fides formata,) some classes 
of New English Divines (justification by faith apprehended as the gen- 
erative principle of holiness, and inclusive thereof,) and the Campbell- 
ites, (justification by the " obedience of faith," viz : immersion.) 
Here is a subtile inlet for works. These perversions have all this com- 
mon mark, that they desert the scriptural doctrine, which makes faith 
the instrument of justification solely through its receptive agency, and 
they claim for faith a purchasing power, or merit of the resuLt.. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 



LECTURE XXXVI. 



SYLLABUS. 
COVENANT OF GRACE. 

1. Has God ever had more than one covenant with man since the fall ? What 
the opinion of Socinians hereon ? Of Anabaptists ? Of Remonstrants f 

Turrettin, Loc. xii, Que. 5, § 1, 2, 4. Racorian C it. 

2. Prove that the covenant of the Old Testament was substantially that of the 
New Testament. 

Turrettin, Que. 5, §. 5-23 ; Witsius de (Econ. Foed. 

3. Under how many dispensations has the covenant been administered ; and 
why so manv ? 

Turrettin. Que. 7, § 1-6, Ridgely, Que. 30, 33. 

4. How much of the covenant was revealed to the Antediluvians ? A mediator ? 
Sacrificial types ? Prove that Gen. iii : 15 is a protevangel ? 

Turrettin, Que. 7, §• 11-17, Heb. xi : 4. Dick, Lect. 50th. Knapp, § 89, 90, 
91. Ridgeley, Que. 34. 

5. What additional revelations from Abraham to Moses ? Prove that Abra- 
ham's was also the Covenant of Grace. Does the Pentateuch reveal a promise of 
eternal life ? 

Turrettin, Que. 7, § 18-23. Warburton's Divine Legation. Calvin's Insti- 
tutes, bk. ii., ch. 10. Knaap and Ridgeley, as above. Compare Gen. xvii. 7, 
with Exod. xx. 2, Deut. ii. 5, 6, Jer. xxiv. 7, Zech. xiii. 9, Heb. viii. 10, 
quoted from Jer. xxxi. 33, Rev. xxi. 3. 

Forms in which God has Administered the Covenant op Grace- 
Development of Grace to be traced. — Inasmuch as the plan of 
our Seminary directs the teacher of Systematic Theology to give special 
prominence to the successive developments of revealed truth, found as 
we proceed, from the Patriarchial to the Mosaic, and thence to the 
Christian ages, we devote other exercises to the subject above an- 
nounced. In discussing it briefly, the order of topics indicated in the- 
syllabus of questions will be pursued. 

The Covenant one in all ages. Opposing views. — Has God ever 
had more than one Covenant of Grace with man since the fall 1 And 
is the covenant made with the Patriarchs and with Israel substantially 
the same spiritual covenant with that of the New Testament? The- 
Socinians and Anabaptists gave a negative answer to this question, 
relying on the passages of Scripture represented by Jno. i : 17. They 
say that the covenant with Abraham and Israel was only national and 
temporal; that it promised only material good; that those of the Old 
Testament who were saved, were saved without a revealed promise, in, 
virtue of that common natural religion, known, as they suppose, to good 
Pagans alike ; by which men are taught to hope in the mercy and benevo- 
lence of a universal Father. To these views the European Arminians 
partly assented, teaohing that the Gospel through the mediator is only 
involved implicitly and generally in the Old Testament, and that no 
special promise through a Christ is there. 

Motive of the Socinians. Of the Anabaptists. — The motive o£ 
the Socinians is two fold ; that they may escape this insuperable difli- 



10 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

culty ; if Christ's redeeming work (in the New Testament) is only what 
they teach that of a prophet and exemplar, and not vicarious, there is of 
sense in which He can have redeemed Old Testament saints, and 2nd, that 
by making the difference of light and grace between the Old Testament, 
and the New, as wide as possible, they may plausibly represent Christ 
as having something to do in the New Testament, dignum vindice 
rmodum, without any atoning work. The Anabaptists, whose Socinian 
affinities were originally strong, take the same view of the Old Tes- 
tament in order to get rid of the doctrine that a gospel Church sub- 
stantially identical with that of the New Testament existed in the Old 
Testament with its infant church members. 

Unity of ths Covenant appears a priori. — As to the unity of the 
Covenant, we have already argued this apriori, from its eternity. We 
may pursue this argument thus : If man's fall laid him necessarily ob- 
noxious to certain immutable attributes of God, if man's sin necessarily 
and everywhere raises a certain definite difficulty between him and re- 
demption in consequence of those inevitable attributes of God, we may 
fairly conclude that whatever plan (if there can be any) is adopted by 
God to reconcile a sinner, that same plan substantially must be adopted 
to reconcile all other sinners of Adam's race everywhere and always. 
To the Socinian indeed, this apriori consideration carries no weight; 
because he does not believe in God's essential, retributive justice, &c. 
Let us then see from the more sure word of Scripture whether the 
covenant of grace set forth in the Old Testament is not substantially 
identical with that in the New, in the things promised, the parties, the 
conditions, and the mediator ; while a difference of clearness and mode is 
admitted. 

Unity of the Covenant argued Scripturally. — This Scriptural 
argument cannot be better collected than under the heads given by 
Turrettin, (Que. v, § 7-23.) 

a.) From direct testimonies. — The identity of the Covenant is 
substantially asserted in general terms — e. g., in Lake i : 68-72 ; Acts 
ii: 16, with v. 38, 39 ; iii: 25; Johnviii: 56; Rom. iv: 16; Gal. iii: 
S, 16, 17; especially the last. Remark here, that the very words in 
which the Covenant was formed with the seed of Abraham, Gen. xvii: 
7; and which are so formally repeated in subsequent parts of the Old 
Testament are the very terms of the compact in the new dispensation, 
repeated as such with emphasis. See Jer. xxxi: 33; 2 Cor. vi: 16; 
Rev. xxi : 3. 

b.) From sameness of Mediator. — The Mediator is the same. 1 
Tim. ii: 5,6: Gal. iii: 16; Mai. iii : 1; Actsiv: 12, x: 43, xv: 10, 
11; Luke xxiv: 27; 1 Pet. i : 9-12; Rom. iii: 25; Heb. ix: 15; 
with many passages already cited. We need not depend on such pas- 
sages as Heb. xiii: 8; Rev. xiii : 8; for although their application to 
prove the mediatorial office of Christ under the Old Testament is pro- 
bably just, plausible evasions exist. 

c.) From its condition. — The condition assigned to man is the 
same in both — e. g., faith. And it is useless for the Socinians, etc., to 
say, that the faith of the Old Testament was not the specific; faith in 
■the Son, the Messiah, set forth in the New, but only a general trust in 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 11 

God as the Universal Father. For their assertion is not true ; and if 
true, it would still remain that the faith of the Old Testament and 
that of the New, include the same substantial features. Look at the 
fact that Heb. xi goes for its illustrations of faith, (surely it was incul- 
cating the Christian faith,) exclusively to the Old Testament ! See, 
also, Gen. xv: 6, with Rom. iv: 3; Ps. ii: 12. (Is not this specifically 
faith in the Son?) Actsx: 43; Ps. xxxii: 10, et passim. 

d.) From its promise. — In the fourth place, it may be asserted that 
to this faith of the Old Testament saints, redemption in the true New 
Testament sense was held forth, with all its several parts; of justifica- 
tion, Ps. xxxii; Is. i: 18; Regeneration, Deut. xxx:6; Ps. Ii: 10; 
Spiritual gifts, passim — e. g., Joel ii : 28, 32, as expounded by Peter, 
Acts ii ; Isaiah xl: 31; eternal life: (as we shall more fully argue 
under a subsequent head, now only noticing.) Heb. iv: 9, xi: 10; 
Exod. iii : 6, as expounded by Christ; Matt, xxii : 31, 32, and this 
eternal life including even the resurrection of the body. Ps. xvi : 10, 
11, applied in Acts xiii : 32 ; Job xix: 25; Dan. xii : 1,2. In view 
of this array of proofs, how weak appears the idea, that nothing more 
than the Land of Canaan and its material joys was proposed to Israel's 
faith 1 But of this more anon. 

e.) From the types. — An argument for our proposition maybe con- 
structed out of all those types under the old dispensation, which can 
be proved to have had an evangelical meaning. The promised land 
itself, the deliverance from Egypt, with its significant incidents ; cir- 
cumcision and the passover, ("seals of the Tightness of faith,") with the 
whole tabernacle ritual, are proved by several parts of the New Testament 
to have had this evangelical meaning. The argument is too wide to be 
briefly stated ; but every intelligent Bible reader is familiar with its 
materials. In its very wideness is its strength. As one specimen of 
it, take the Epistle of Hebrews itself. The Apostle, in interpreting 
the Levitical ritual, there shows that all prefigured the gospel, and the 
New Testament, Messiah and redemption. During the Old Testament 
times, therefore, it was but a dispensation of this same Covenant of 
Grace. 

And in general, all the gospel features sown so thickly over the Old 
Testament, especially over the books of Psalms and Isaiah, prove our 
point. 

Of such passages as Rom. xvi: 25; Gal. iv : 24; 1 Pet. i: 12, &c, 
we are well aware. We shall show their compatibility with the pro- 
position above demonstrated, when we come to unfold the resemblances 
and differences of the two dispensations. 

Two Dispensations only. Objection answered. — We conceive 
the familiar and established division to be correct, which makes two 
dispensations only, the Old Testament and the New. There seems no 
adequate reason for regarding the patriarchal age, from Adam to Moses, 
as essentially a different dispensation from that of Moses. Certainly 
that representation is incorrect which makes the former a free and 
gracious dispensation, while the latter only was burdened with the 
condemning weight of the moral and ritual law. For the moral law 
(not indeed the wording of the Decalogue) was already in force from 



12 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Adam to Moses. Sacrifices already smoked on altars, and the knife 
descended in symbol of wrath, on innocent victims. And gracious 
promises are, at least, as thickly strown over the Scriptures of the 
Mosaic period, as of the patriarchal. We hardly need cite cases. 
There are passages, such as Gal. iii: 17; Deut. v: 2, 3, which speak 
of a ritual burden, and law which could minister only condemnation 
as superadded at the Mosaic era. But we shall find that the elements 
of a moral law impossible for the depraved to fulfil, and of a ritual 
which typified only wrath to him who persisted in ignoring the Media- 
tor and the Covenant of Grace, were also present in the patriarchal 
religion. The history of Cain too clearly establishes these traits of 
the patriarchal age. These elements were only re-affirmed by Moses. 
If it be said that they were then brought forward with far greater 
prominence and distinctness. I answer, so were the gospel elements 
brought forward, to true believers, at the same time, with increased 
distinctness. When the Apostles bring out so prominently this con- 
demning burden of the Mosaic law, they are dealing, for the time, with 
only one side of the subject. Because, they are dealing with Jews 
who persisted in looking for justification to this law, which apart from 
Christ, is only a ministry of cordemnation ; who persisted in stickling 
for Moses, Moses, as their authority for their self-righteous perversions 
of the law and gospel. In dealing with this subject, theologians per- 
petually forget how necessarily the Apostles had to use the argumentum 
ad hominem against these Jews. That the patriarchial and Mosaic 
form properly but one dispensation appears from this. Both exhibit 
the great, prevalent characteristic of types : both were prefigurative 
instead of being; like the New Testament commemorative ; both had 
sacrifice, circumcision, priests. The difference between them is only 
one of degree, and not of contrast. ' But when we come to the New 
Testament, there is a real contrast. Human priests, sacrifices and cir- 
cumcision end. Types give place to antitypes ; prefiguring to commem- 
orative ordinances. 

» Why two Dispensations of the same Covenant ? Ans.^ — To the 
question why God has administered the Covenant of Grace under two 
different dispensations, no complete answer can be rendered, except 
that; of Matt, xi : 26. The true difficulty of the question lies chiefly 
back in this prior question : Why did God see fit to postpone the incar- 
nation of the mediator so long after the fall ? For, supposing this 
question settled, we can see some reasons why, if the effectuating of 
the terms of the Covenant of Grace, was to be postponed thus, its dec- 
larations to man must be by a different dispensation before and after 
the surety came. Before, all was prospective. Every promise must, in 
the nature of things, be a prediction also ; and prediction, prior to its fulfil- 
ment, must needs be to finite minds, less plain than experience and his- 
tory after the occurrence. Every symbolical ordinance (both dispensa- 
tions for good reasons have such) must needs be a type ;. foreshadowing. 
Afterwards it is a commemoration looking backward. May it not be, 
that the greater variety and number of the symbolical ordinances under 
the Old Testament were due to the very fact that they must needs be 
less distinct? God sought to make up in number what was lacking in 
distinctness. But to the question : why the mission of Christ was post- 
poned nearly 4000 years, there is no adequate answer. The circum- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 13 

stances which made that era " the fullness of time " have been pointed 
out by the Church Historians. But the relations of influence and cau- 
sation in human affairs are too intricate and numerous for man to spec- 
ulate here. 

The causes assigned by Turrettin (Que. 7, § 2-6) do indeed indicate 
the existence of an analogy with God's other working herein. God 
performs all his grand results by gradations. Childhood and pupilage 
go before manhood and independence. So majestic a luminary as the 
Sun of Righteousness may be expected to rise gradually, and send His 
twilight before Him ! True; but these are only paliations, not answers 
to the difficulty. 

3. The Gospel was preached to Adam. — To appreciate correctly 
the amount of Gospel light possessed in the patriarchal, and even in 
the Mosaic ages, we must bear in mind a thing often overlooked that 
the human race had just enjoyed, in Adam, personal communication 
with God, in fullest theophanies, which Adam by the faculties of his 
perfect manhood, and other patriarchs, through their longevity, were 
admirably qualified to transmit well. Adam was cotemporary with 
Methuselah 243 years, Methuselah with Noah 600 years (dying the year 
•of the flood,) and Noah with Abram 58 years. Thus Abraham received 
the revelations of paradise through only two transmissions ! We must 
not suppose that this traditionary knowledge of God was scanty, because 
the hints of it given in earlier revelations are scanty ; because the pur- 
poses of revelation do not require that we should be fully informed 
thereon ; and the Holy Ghost never wanders from his point. But we 
have two unmistakeable items of a revelation unfolding the covenant 
of grace after the fall. The first is Gen. iii : 15. Proved to be a pro- 
per Protevangelism by the considerations that if the serpent represents 
.Satan, then of course He who is to bruise his head must be more than 
man, already conquered by Satan; and by John xii : 31, Luke x: 19, 
20, Rom. xvi : 20, Heb. ii : 14, Rev. xii : 8, 9. One thing we know, 
that the very earliest patriarchs had a gospel promise, because they 
had faith. Heb. xi : 4-7. The second item is the existence of sacrifices 
from the first. We conclude that these were of divine appointment 
from three things; that reason would hardily indicate their propriety, 
from the comparison of Gen. iii : 21 with Gen. ix ; 3, 4, and from Heb. 
xi : 4- No doubt the Sabbath was observed from the days of Eden. 
(See Lecture on the Sabbath, Decalogue.) 

Added Light given to Abraham. — At the epoch of Abraham, the 
declaration of the Covenant of Grace was farther developed. The Sab- 
bath, the sacrifices and the promise, subsisted as before. The additions 
were, the calling of Abraham, the formation of an ecclesiastical cove- 
sant with him and his, {now made necessary in order to separate a vis- 
ible Church because of the uniform and ineradicable tendency of the 
bulk of the race to rebellion,) and the institution of circumcision. 
The new feature of a limitation of the Covenant to one race, now arises 
also ; but this is only a result of that necessity just indicated, that there 
should be a visible Church separation from the world. In that age, the 
patriarchal form was superinduced on all organized bodies. Abraham 
and his seed did indeed receive a temporal promise of Canaan ; but 
that there was a spiritual and gospel feature implied in Gen. xii: 3, xv : 



14 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

5, xvii : 7, is abundantly proved by Gal. iii : 16, and by all which the 
New Testament says of Abraham's faith. 

Formula of the Covenant in all Dispensations the Same. — That 
the formulary, " I will be a God to them," &c, is an application of the 
Covenant of Grace has already been shown, and evinced especially from 
Jer. xxxi : 33, Rev. xxi : 3, &c. A comparison of these and the other 
passages referred to, will show that the words, " I will be to them a 
God, and they shall be my people," are an intentional formula, by 
which the Covenant of Grace in all its dispensations, expresses summa- 
rily, the blessings stipulated to believers in Christ. Not only do we 
hear them in Genesis xvii, when God formed his Church covenant with 
Abraham and his seed. They recur in the most evangelical promises 
of the Psalms and the prophets, and always in the most cardinal decla- 
rations of God's grace. In the New Testament, the same formula re- 
appears like a grand chorus. It is repeated in the Epistles ; and when 
descriptive prophecy in the book of Revelation shows us the ransomed 
Church finally united to her Divine Head, in the actual fruition of 
grace, we hear still the same " refrain," " They shall be His people, 
and God Himself shall be their God." 

Eternal Life was revealed to the Patriarchs. — And here we 
must pause a moment, to consider the question famously debated in 
the negative, for instance, by Warburton's Divine Legat. of Moses : 
"Whether the patriarchal ages had any revealed promise of future 
eternal life ?" I would premise that the scantiness of the teachings 
on this point will not surprise us, if we remember that this funda- 
mental truth is rather assumed than taught. It has been well remarked 
that the Bible no where sets itself deliberately to teach the existence 
of God ! We may well suppose the traditionary religion received 
from Adam made the immortality of the soul, and future rewards, so clear 
that little was then needed to be said about it. But let us see if this 
doctrine was not plainly implied to the patriarchs. (A.ccutely argued, 
Calv. Institutes, L. 2, Ch. 10.) a.) They had promises. The New 
Testament expressly declares these promises were the gospel. Rom. 
iii: 21 ; Luke i: 69-73. But the gospel relates to spiritual and ever- 
lasting good, b ) The patriarchs embraced the promises they had with 
faith ; but faith is the principle of everlasting life. Hab. ii : 4 ; Heb. 
x: 38. c.) The Covenant with Abraham, Gen. xvii: 7, plainly im- 
plies an everlasting relation to Him, and therefore, eternal life. See 
Ps. xvi : 5, and end; xlviii : 14; Deut. xxxiii : 27. d.) The extension 
of God's promise to their seed implies the patriarchs' immortality ; for 
if they were annihilated, what privilege would it be to them then 1 
See also Exod. iii : 6, as expounded by Christ ; Matt, xxii : 32-34. 
e.) If the promise to the patriarchs was only of temporal good, it was 
false ; for they were " strangers and pilgrims in the earth," e. g., 
Abraham, Jacob. Last. Their dying exercises pointed to an immor- 
tality. See Heb.' xi : 9, &c; Gen. xlix : 18; Num. xxiii : 10; Gen. 
xlix: 33. In the subsequent Old Testament Scriptures, after the Pen- 
tateuch, the doctrine is full. 



*.;0F LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 15 

LECTUKE XXXVII. 



SYLLABUS. 
COVENANT OF GRACE. Concluded.) 

fi. What farther developments of the Covenant of Grace were made by the 
Mosaic Economy ? 

Turrettin, Loc. xii, Que. 7, § 24-26. Ridgeley, Que. 33, 34, § 1. Knapp, 
§ 90, 91. 

7. What was the true nature of the Covenant made by God through Moses at 
Sinai ? 

Turrettin, Que. 12. Calv. Inst., Bk. ii, Ch. 7. Ridgeley, a above. Tur- 
rettin, Que. 7, § 28-31. 

8. How do the old and new Dispensations differ, inter se ? 

Turrettin, as above, and Que. 8, § 18-25. Calvin's Inst. Bk. ii, Ch. 11. 
Ridgeley, as above. Calvin Com. Gal. 4th. 

9. Did the Old Testament saints enjoy actual redemption, and from their 
deaths glorification : or was the application of Redemption to them, postponed 
to Christ's resurrection ? 

Turrettin, Que. 9, § 1-11, and Que. 10. Knapp, § 150. 

10. Do the Scriptures teach a Limbus Patrum ? 

Turrettin, Que. 11. Catechism, Rom. Pt. i, Ch. vi, Que. 1 to 6, inclusive. 
Knapp, § 96. 

6, 7. Additions at Sinai. — Coming now to the last stage of the old 
dispensation, the Covenant of Sinai, we find several marked and im- 
pressive additions to the former revelations. But they will all be 
found rather developments of existing features of the gospel, than new 
elements. These traits were, chiefly, the republication of the meral 
Law with every adjunct of majesty and authority, the establishment 
of a Theocratic State-Church, in place of simpler patriarchal forms, 
with fully detailed civic institutions, the Passover a new sacrament ; 
and the great development of the sacrificial ritual. 

The Covenant of Sinai not a Covenant of Works. — The Cove- 
nant of Sinai has seemed to many to wear such an aspect of legality, 
that they have supposed themselves constrained to regard it as a species 
of covenant of works ; and, therefore, a recession from the Abrahamic 
Covenant, which, we are expressly told, (John viii : 56 ; Gal. iii : 8,) 
contained the gospel. Now, one objection to this view, making two 
distinct dispensations between Adam and Christ, and the first a 
dispensation of the Covenant of Grace, and the one which came after, 
of the Covenant of Works, is a priori, unreasonable. For, it is unrea- 
sonable in this : that it is a recession, instead of a progress ; whereas 
every consistent idea of the plan of Revelation makes it progressive. 
It is unreasonable ; because both the Old and New Testaments repre- 
sent the Sinai Covenant as a signal honour and privilege to Israel. 
But they also represent the Covenant of Works as inevitably a cove- 
nant of death to man after the Fall ; so that had the transactions of 
Sinai been a regression from the <; Gospel preached before unto Abra 
ham," to a Covenant of Works, it would have been a most signal curse 
poured out on the chosen people. The attempt is made to evade this,, 
by saying that, while eternal life to the Hebrews was now suspended 



16 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

on a covenant of works, tbey were ritual works only, in which an exact 
formal compliance was all that was required. This is untenable ; because 
it is inconsistent with God's spiritual and unchangeable character, and 
with His honour; and because the Mosaic Scriptures are as plain as the 
New Testament in disclaiming the sufficiency of an exact ritual righte- 
ousness, as the term of eternal life, and in requiring a perfect, spiritual 
obedience. If a ritual obedience was accepted instead of a spiritual 
one, that was an act of grace — a remission of the claims of laws — so 
that the Mosaic turns out a dispensation of grace, after all. But grace 
was preached to Abel, Noah, Abraham, in a prior dispensation, through 
a Mediator to come. Now, through what medium was this gracious re- 
mission of law given to Israel, at Sinai 1 The answer we give is so 
consistent, that it appears self-evident, almost : That it was through 
the same Christ to come, already preached to the Patriarchs, and now 
typified in the Levitical sacrifices. So that the theory I combat re- 
solves itself, in spite of itself, as it were, into the correct theory, viz : 
That the promise contained in the Covenant of Sinai was through the 
Mediator, typified in the Levitical sacrifices ; and that the term for 
enjoying that promise was not legal, not an exact ritual obedience, but 
gospel, faith in the antitype. 

Additions at Sinai. — But let us proceed to a more exact examina- 
tion. We find that the transactions at Sinai included the following; 
a.) A republication of the Moral Law, with greatest majesty and au- 
thority, b.) An expansion of the Ritual of the typical service, with 
the addition of a second sacrament, the passover. c.) The change of 
the visible Church instituted in Gen. 17th, into a theocratic common- 
wealth-church — both in one. d.) The legal conditions of outward good- 
standing were made more burdensome and exacting, than they had been 
before. This last feature was not a novelty, (See Gen. xvii : 14,) but 
it was made more stringent. 

Their Designs. — Can the designs of these modifications be explained 
consistently with our view? Yes. As to the theocratic state, this was 
necessitated by the numbers of the Church, which had outgrown the 
family state — and needed temporal institutions capable of still larger 
growth, even into a grand nation. The amplified ritual was designed 
to foreshadow the approaching Christ, and the promises of the Cove- 
nant more fully. Next : The legal conditions for retaining outward 
ecclesiastical privilege were made more stringent, in order to enable 
the Law to fulfil more energetically the purpose for which St. Paul 
says it was added, to be a psedagogue to lead to Christ. (See Gal. iii: 
19, 22.) For this stringency was designed to be, to the Israelite, a 
perpetual reminder of the law which was to Adam the condition of 
life, now broken, and its wrath already incurred, thus to hedge up the 
awakened conscience to Christ. This greater urgency was made neces- 
sary by the sinfulness of the Church, and its tendencies to apostasy, with 
the seductions of Paganism now general in the rest of mankind. 

Scripture proofs of the identity of Moses' Covenant with 
Abraham's. — We can farther demonstrate, now, that the Sinai Cove- 
nant was not a new one, nor was it substantially different from Abra- 
ham's. For a.) (See Gal. iii : 17,) fidelity to the bond already entered 
into with Abraham and his seed excluded such action, b.) The law, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 17 

"both moral and ritual, was in force under Abraham. (Rom. v : 13, 
14; Gen. xvii : 14.) But if we find the very feature in the Abra- 
hamic age, which is supposed to characterize the arrangements of 
Sinai, it is most evident that this feature cannot prove them different, 
■c.) Both the moral and a (less burdensome) ritual law are still binding 
in the same sense, under the New Testament dispensation. (See Matt. 
v: 17; Jno. iii : 5; Mark xvi : 16.) Surely the New Testament is 
not, therefore, a Covenant of Works ! Last, Christ expressly says, that 
Moses taught of Hiin. (Luke xxiv : 27; Jno. v : 46.) If Moses 
taught of Christ, it can hardly be, that he also taught a system so 
antagonistic to the Christian, as a Covenant of salvation by works. 

8. Differences of Old Dispensation from New. — A correct view 
of the nature of that display made of the Covenant of Grace in the 
Old Dispensation, will be gained by comparing it with the New. All 
orthodox writers agree that there is both law and gospel in the Old 
Testament Scriptures. If, by the Old Testament Covenant, is under- 
stood only that legal covenant of moral and ceremonial works, then 
there will indeed be ground for all the strong contrast, when it is com- 
pared with the Gospel in the New Testament, which some writers draw 
between the severity and terror of the one, and the grace of the other. 
But in our comparison, we shall be understood as comparing the Old 
Dispensation with the New, taken with all their features, as two wholes. 
We find Turrettin (Ques. 8, § 18, 25), makes them differ in their date or 
time, in their clearness, in their facility of observance, in their mildness, 
in their perfection, in their liberty, in their amplitude, and in their per- 
petuity. Calvin (B. 2, Ch. 11,) finds five differences: that the Old 
Testament promises eternal life typically under figures of Canaan, that 
the Old Testament is mainly typical, that it is liberal; while the New 
Testament is spiritual, that it gendered to bondage, and that it limited 
its benefits to one nation. 

The Old too much Depreciated. — I am persuaded that the strong 
representations which these writers (and most others following them,) 
and yet more, the Cocceian school, give of the bondage, terror, literal- 
ness, and intolerable weight of the institutions under which Old Test- 
ament saints lived, will strike the attentive reader as incorrect. The 
■experience, as recorded of those saints, does not answer to this theory; 
hut shows them in the enjoyment of a dispensation free, spiritual, gra- 
cious, consoling, as truly as our's is. I ask emphatically : does not the 
New Testament Christian of all ages, go to the recorded experiences of 
those very Old Testament saints, for the most happy and glowing ex- 
pressions in which to utter his hope, gratitude, spiritual joy 1 Is it said 1 
that these are the experiences of eminent saints, who had this full joy 
(even as compared to New Testament saints,) not because the published 
truth was equal to that now given; but because they had higher spir- 
itual discernment. Ans. By nature they were just like " us, sinners of 
the gentiles ;" so that if they had more spiritual discernment, it must be 
because there was a freer and fuller dispensation of the Holy Ghost to 
them than to us. {Much fuller ! to repair all defect of means, and 
more than bring them to a level.) But this overthrows Calvin's idea 
of the dispensation as a less liberal one. Or, is it pleaded 1 These are 
only the inspired, and therefore exceptional cases of the Old Testament 



18 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Church. Ans. Did not God give the inspired experiences as appro- 
priate models for those of their brethren 1 These distorted representa- 
tions have been produced by the seeming force of such passages as Jno. 
i : 17 ; 2 Cor. iii : 6, 7 ; Gal. iii ; 19, 23 ; iv : 1,4 and 24-26 ; Heb. 
viii: 8 ; Acts xv : 10. But the scope and circumstances of the Apos- 
tles, in making such statements, are greatly overlooked. They were 
arguing, for the gospel plan, against self-righteous Jews, who had per- 
versely cast away the gospel significance out of the Mosaic institutions 
to which they clung, and wbo retained only the condemning features of 
those institutions ; vainly hoping to make a righteousness out of com- 
pliance with a law, whose very intent was to remind men that they could 
make no righteousness for themselves. Hence we must always remem- 
ber that the Apostles are using, to a certain extent, an argumentum ad 
hominem : they are speaking of the Mosaic institutions under the Jewish 
view of them. They are treating of that side or aspect, which alone 
the perverse Jew retained of them. Here is the key. 

The New Testament Language as to it Explained. New Tes- 
tament also a Dispensation of Bondage to Ritualist. — The truth 
is, both dispensations are precisely alike, in having two sides to them : 
a law which condemns those who will persist in self-righteous plans ; 
and a gospel which rescues the humble believer from that condemnation. 
The obligation of Works', (conditions of which were reenacted in the 
Decalogue,) perpetual, being founded on the very relations between man 
and God, on all except those who are exempted from it by the substi- 
tutionary righteousness of the Mediator. It is of force now, on all 
others. It thunders just as it did in Eden and on Sinai. Nor, I beg you 
to note, is the Old Testament singular, in enjoining a ritual law, which 
is also " the letter that killeth," a " carnal ordinance," a " ministration 
of death," to those who perversely refuse to be pointed by it to the 
Messiah, and who try to make a self-righteousness out of the ritual. 
The New Testament also has its sacraments ; all are commanded to 
partake, yet he that eateth and drinketh, not discerning the Lord's 
body, " eateth and drinketh damnation to himself;" and he that takes 
the water of Baptism self-righteously, only sees therein a terrible sym- 
bol of his need of a cleansing which he does not receive. Let an evan- 
gelical Christian imagine himself instructing and refuting a modern 
Ritualist' of the School of Rome or the Tractarians. He would fiud 
himself necessarily employing an argumentum ad hominem precisely 
like that of Paul against the Pharisees. The evangelical believer would 
be forced to distinguish between the legal or condemning, and the 
gospel side of our own sacraments; and he would proceed to show, that 
by attempting to make a self-righteousness out of those sacraments, the 
modern Pharisee was goiug back under a dispensation of condemnation 
and bondage; that he was throwing away ' the spirit which giveth life,' 
and retaining only the ' letter that killeth.' 

The New Testament has also its sacrifice ; the one sacrifice of Christ; 
and to him who rejects the pardon which it purchased, it is a ministry 
of damnation, more emphatic than all the blood of beasts could utter. 
Both dispensations have their " letter that killeth," as well as their 
*' spirit that giveth life," their Sinai as well as their Zion. And in 
the very place alluded to, it is the killing letter of the New Testament 
of which Paul speaks, 2 Cor. iii ; 6. Besides in the Old Testament 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 19 

do part of the ritual could be more crushing than the moral command- 
ment "exceeding broad," is to the unrenewed. But see Matt, v: 17-20. 

Again. The Old Testament distinguished both as ( to its word, and 
its ordinances, between this letter thatkilleth and this spirit that giveth 
life. Deut. x : 12 ; Ps. 1 : 16, 17, 22 ; Prov. xxi : 3 : 1 Samuel xv : 22 ; 
Ps. li: 16, 17; Isa. i: 13-20, &c. 

Now just as the Christian minister would argue with a nominal 
Christian who persisted in making a righteousness out of the sacra- 
ments, so the Apostles argued with the Jews, who persisted in making 
a righteousness out of their ritual. Thus abused, the ritual of the 
Old Testament and of the New loses its gracious side and only retains 
its condemning. Peter says, Acts xv : 10, the ritual was a yoke which 
neither Jews nor their fathers were able to bear. Did God signalize 
His favour to His chosen people by imposing an intolerable ritual ? Is 
it true that well-disposed Jews could not bear it? See Luke i : 6 ; 
Phil, iii : 6. No, Peter has in view the ritual used in that self-righteous 
sense, in which the Judaizing Christians regarded it while desiring to 
impose it on Gentiles. As a rule of justification it would be intoler- 
able. The decalogue (2 Cor. iii: 7) would be a ministration of death 
to him who persisted to use it as these Jews did. But Moses gave it 
as only one side, one member of his dispensation, " to be. a schoolmas- 
ter to lead us to Christ." Gal. iii : 16 speaks of a laxo given 430 years 
after the Covenant of Grace, and seeming to be contrasted. But it 
" could not disannul it." Did not Abraham's Covenant of Grace 
survive this law, as much in the ante-Christian, as in the post-Chris- 
tian times? 

Gal. 3d and 4th Explained. — Calvin says, as I conceive, perverting 
the sense of Gal. 4th, that the time of bondage, in which "the heir 
differed nothing from the slave," was the time of the Jewish dispen- 
sation, while the time of liberation was the time of the Christian dis- 
pensation. Not so. As to the visible Church collectively, and its out- 
ward or ecclesiastical privilege, this was true ; but not as to individual 
believers in the Church. And this distinction satisfies the Apostle's 
scope in Gal. 3d and 4th, and Heb. viii: 7, 8, and reconciles with pas- 
sages about to be quoted, [cf. Turrettin on Heb. ix : 8, Que. 11, § 
14.] Was David still in bondage, "differing nothing from that of a 
slave," when he sung Ps. xxxii : 1, 2; cxvi : 16? The time of tutel- 
age was, to each soul, the time of his self-righteous, unbelieving, con- 
victed, but uuhumbled struggles. The time of the liberty is, when he 
has flown to Christ. This, whether he was Israelite or Christian. 
Isaac, says another, symbolized the gospel believer, Ishmael, the He- 
brew. Were not Isaac and Ishmael cotemporary f Interpret the alle- 
gory consistently. And was it not Isaac, who was, not allegorically, 
but literally, and actually, the Hebrew, the subject of an Old Testa- 
ment dispensation, a ritual dispensation, a typical one, only differing 
from the Mosaic in details 1 This would be to represent the Apostle, 
as making a bungling allegory, indeed, to choose the man who was 
actually under the dispensation of bondage, as the type of the liberty, 
had St. Paul intended to prove that the Old Dispensation was a bond- 
age. And it would be bungling logic, again, to represent the spiritual 
liberty, to which he wished to lead his hearers, by sonshipto Abraham, 
if Abraham were the very head, with whom the dispensation of bond- 



20 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

age was formed ! St. Paul warns the foolish Galatians who " desired 
to be under the Law." "Do ye not hear the Law?" (Gal. iv; 21.) 
The thing which the law says to such self-righteous fools, is read in 
Gal. iii : 10. "As many as are of the works of the law are under the 
curse," &c. St. Paul's allegory says, that Ishmael's mother (the type 
of the soul in bondage) represents Sinai, and Sinai again, "the Jeru- 
salem which now is." Sarah, then, represents what ? " The Jerusalem 
which is above, and is free." Which of these answereth to King 
David's Zion, " the city of the great King, in whose palaces God is 
known as a Refuge?" (Ps. xlviii : 3,4.) Obviously, Sarah and her 
children. But the Pharisees of the Apostle's day claimed to be the 
heirs of that very Zion, and did literally and geographically inhabit 
it ! How is this 1 They were in form the free-woman's heirs — in fact, 
bastards. And they had disinherited themselves, by casting away the 
gospel, and selecting the legal significance of the transactions of Sinai. 
The Sinai which now answereth to the bond-woman is not the Sinai of 
Moses, of Jehovah, and of Abraham ■ but the Sinai of the legalist, 
the Sinai which the Pharisee insisted on havmg. 

Yet the Old Necessarily Inferior. — You will not understand me 
as asserting that the Old Testament dispensation was as well adapted 
to the purposes of redemption as the New. This would be in the teeth 
of Heb. viii : 7, &c. The inferior clearness, fulness, and liberality 
result necessarily from the fact that it preceded Christ's coming in the 
the flesh. The visible Church, in its collective capacity, was, as to its 
outward means and privileges, in a state of minority and pupillage. 
But every true believer in it looked forward by faith, through that 
very condition of inferiority, to the blessings covenanted to him in the 
■coming Messiah ; so that his soul, individually, was not in a state of 
minority or bondage; but in a state of full adoption and freedom. 
This state of the visible Church, however, as contrasted with that which 
the Church now enjoys, is illustrative of the contrast between the 
spiritual stata of the elect soul, before conversion, while convicted and 
self-righteous, and after conversion while rejoicing in hope. This re- 
mark may serve to explain the language of Galatians 3d and 4th. 

Real Points of Difference. — I would discard, then, those repre- 
sentations of the intolerable harshness, bondage, literalness, absence of 
spiritual blessing, in the old dispensation, and give the following mod- 
ified statement : 

a.) The old dispensation preceded the actual transacting of Christ's 
vicarious work. The new dispensation succeeds it. 

b.) Hence, the ritual teachings, (not all the teachings) of the old 
dispensation were typical ; those of the New Testament are commemorative 
symbols. A type is a symbolic prediction ; and for the same reason that 
prophecy is less intelligible before the event, than history of it after- 
wards, there was less clearness and fulness of disclosure. (See 1 Pet. 
i : 12.) Again, because under the Old Testament the Divine sacrifice 
by which guilt was to be removed, was still to be made the sacrificial 
types, (those very types which foreshadowed the pardoning grace as well 
as the condemning justice,) made a more prominent and repeated exhi- 
bition of guilt than now, under the gospel, when the sacrifice is com- 
pleted ; (Heb. x : 3,) because it was harder to look to the atonement in 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 21 

the future, than it is now in the past, the voice of the law, the pseda- 
gogue who directed men's eyes to Christ was graciously rendered louder 
and more frequent than it is now. 

c.) Perspicuity in commemorating, being easier than in predicting, 
the ritual teachings of the previous dispensation were more numerous^ 
varied and laborious. 

d.) God, in His inscrutable wisdom, saw fit to limit the old dispen- 
sation to one nation, so far at least, as to require that any sinner embra- 
cing it should become an Israelite ; and to make the necessary ritual 
territorial and local. Under the New Testament all nations are received 
alike. 

. e.) The 'previous dispensation was temporary, the New Testament 
will last till the consummation of all things. 

9&10. Old Testament Saints redeemed at death. — With reference 
to the state of the Old Testament saints in the other world, we discard 
the whole fable of the Papists concerning a limbus patritm, and the 
postponement of the application of redemption to them — till Christ's 
death. Christ's suretyship is such, that His undertaking the believer's 
work, releases the believer as soon as the condition is fulfilled. 
He is not merely Fidejussor, but ex promissor (Turrettin), Christ being 
an immutable, almighty and faithful surety, when he undertook to make 
satisfaction to the law, it was, in the eye of that God to whom a thou- 
sand years are but as one day, as good as done. (Here, by the way, is 
some evidence that the chief necessity of atonement was not to make a 
govermental display, but to satisfy God's own attributes.) See Rom. 
iii: 25; Heb.ix- 15; Ps.xxxii: 1,2; li : 2, 10-13; ciii : 12; Is. xliv : 22; 
Luke xvi : 22 ; 23 with Matt, viii : 11 ; Luke ix ; 31 ; Ps. lxxiii ; 24 ; 1 
Pet. iii: 19, Heb. ix : 8. 

These texts seems to me to prove, beyond all doubt, that Christ's 
sacrifice was for the guilt of Old Testament believers, as well as those 
under the New Testament ; that the anticipative satisfaction was im- 
puted to the old saints when they believed, and that at their deaths, 
they went to the place of glory in God's presence. What else can we 
make of the translations of Enoch and Elijah, and the appearance of 
Moses in glory, before Christ's death ? 

No Limbus Patrum. — The strength of the Papists' scriptural argu- 
ment is in the last two of the texts cited by me. I may add, also. 
Rev. xiv : 13, which the Papists would have us understand, as though 
the terminus a quo of the blessedness of the believing dead were from the 
date of that oracle; implying that hitherto those dying in the Lord 
had not been immediately blessed. It is a flagrant objection to this 
exposition, that the Apocalypse was a whole generation after Christ's 
resurrection, when, according to Papists, the dying saints began to go 
to heaven. The terminus is, evidently, the date of each saint's death. 
The testimony from Heb. ix : 8, you have seen answered, by your text- 
book, Turrettin. The Apostle's scope here shows that his words are 
not to be wrested to prove that there was no application of redemption 
until after Christ died. The author is attempting to show that the 
Levitical temple and ritual were designed to be superceded. This he 
argues, with admirable address, from the nature of the services them- 
selves: The priests offered continually, and the High Priest every year. 



22 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

by the direction of the Holy Ghost; by which God showed that that 
ritual was not to be permanent ; for if it had been adequate, it would 
have done its work and ceased. Its repetition showed that the work 
of redemption was not done ; and never would be, until another dis- 
pensation came, more efficacious than it. Such is the scope. Now, 
the words, " the way into the sanctuary was not yet manifested," in 
such a connexion, are far short of an assertion, that no believing soul 
could, at death, be admitted to heaven. Is not the meaning rather, 
that until Christ finished His sacrifice, the human priest still stood be- 
tween men and the mercy-seat ? 

Especially, not in i. Pet. i: 19, &c. — But the locus palmarius of 
the Papists for a Limbus Patrum, is 1 Pet. iii ; 19, &c. On this obscure 
text you may consult, besides commentaries, (among whom see Calvin 
in loco,) Knapp, Chr. Theol., § 96 ; Turrettin, Loc. xii, Que. 11, § 15; 
Loc. xiii, Que. 15, § 12. Here, again, our safest guide is the Apostle's 
scope, which is this: Christ is our Exemplar in submitting patiently to 
undeserved suffering. For Him his own people slew the very Saviour 
who, so far from deserving ill at their hands, had in all ages been 
offering gospel mercy to them and their fathers, even to those most rep- 
robate of all the Antediluvians. But the same Divine Nature in which 
Christ had been so mercifully carrying a slighted gospel to that ancient 
generation, (now, for their unbelief, shut up in the prison of hell,) 
gloriously raised Him from the dead, after their equally reprobate pos- 
terity had unjustly slain Him. Here is our encouragement while we 
suffer innocently after the example of our Head. For this resurrection, 
which glorified Him over all His ancient and recent enemies, will save 
us. Then we, redeemed by that grace which was symbolized to the 
ancient believers by the type of the ark, and to modern, by the sacra- 
ment of baptism, will emerge triumphantly from an opposing and per- 
secuting world, as Christ's little Church, (consisting then of a number 
contemptible in unbeliever's eyes,) in Noah's day came out from the 
world of unbelievers. 

With this simple and consistent view of the Apostle's drift, the 
whole dream of a descent into Hades, and a release of the souls of the 
patriarchs from their limbus, is superfluous, and therefore unreasonable. 



LECTURE XXXY1II. 



SYLLABUS. 
MEDIATOR OF THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 

1. What the meaning of the word, Mediator ? Whence the necessity for one 
ki the Covenant of Grace ? 

Turrettin, Loc. xiii, Que. 3, § 3-1S. Dick. Lect. 51. Lexicons. 

2. Is Jesus of Nazareth the promised Mediator of the Covenant of Gracee '! 
(Against Jews.) _ 

Turrettin, Que. 2, § 3-21, and Que. 1. Home's Introduct., vol. i. Ap- 
pendix, No. vi, Ch. 1. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 23 

'3. What is the constitution of Christ's person ? Doctrine of Gnostics, Euty- 
•chianSjNestorians, and Orthodox hereon f What the effects of this " hypostatic 
anion " on the Mediatorial person and acts ? 

Hill, Bk. iii, Ch. 8. Turrettin, Loc. xiii, Que. 6, 7, 8. Church Histories, 
especially Gieseler, vol. i, § 42-45, and 86-88. Dick., Con 1 , of Faith, Ch. 
viii, especially § 1-4. Ridgeley, Que. xxxvii. 

4. Does Christ perform His Mediatorial offices in both natures ? And why is 
•each necessary ? 

Turrettin, Loc. xiv, Que. 2, § 1-12. Loc. xiii, Que. 3, § 19-22. Calvin, 
Inst., Rk. ii, Ch. 12. Dick, Lect. 51 and 53. Turrettin, Loc. xiii, Que. 9. 
Ridgeley, Que. 38-40. 

5. What the Socinian view of the necessity of Christ's prophetic work ? 
Answer ? 

Turrettin, Loc. i, § 4. Stapfer, Ch. xii, § 18-25, and 122, &c. 

Mediator of the Covenant of Grace. 

1. Mediator what ? — The loord mediator is in the New Testament 
mesites middle man. The phrase does not occur in the Old Tes- 
tament, except in the Sept. translation of Job ix : 33, (Engl. v. " days- 
man,") and then, with thes ense of umpire, notof mediator. Its idea in 
New Testament is evidently one who intervenes to act between parties, 
who cannot, for some reason, act with each other directly. Thus, 
Moses was (Gal. iii : 19) the mediator of the Theocratic covenant. But 
in this, he was no more than internuncius. Christ's mediation included 
far more, as will appear when we prove His three offices of ■prophet, priest 
and king ; which are here resumed. 

Why needed in Covenant of Grace. — No mediator was necessary 
in the Covenant of Works between God and angels, or God and Adam; 
because in unfallen creatures there was nothing to bar direct inter- 
course between them and God. Hence the Scripture presents no evi- 
dence of Christ's performing any mediatorial function for them. On 
the contrary the Bible implies always, that Christ's offices were under- 
taken, because men were sinners. Matt, i: 21, Is. liii, Juo. iii: 16. 
But, man being fallen, the necessity of His mediation appears from all 
the moral attributes of God's nature; His truth, (pledged to punish 
sin,) His justice, (righteously and necessarily bound to requite it,) His 
goodness, (concerned in the wholesome order of His kingdom,) and His 
holiness, (intrinsically repellent of sinners. ) So also, man's enmity, 
evil conscience and guilty fear, awakened by sin, call, though not so 
necessarily, for a mediator. See also Jno. iii : 21. 

It has been objected that this argument represents God's will as under 
a constraint ; for else what hindered His saving man by His mere will? 
And that it dishonours His wisdom by making Him go a roundabout 
way to His end, subjecting His Son to many humiliations and pangs. 
The answer is ; the necessity was a moral one, proceeding out of God's 
own voluntary perfections. Note. To sustain our ai'gument we must 
assert that God's mere will is not the sole origin of moral distinctions. 
<See Lect. viii on that point. 

2. Christ the Mediator of the Old Testament. — Against the 
Jews we assert that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah and Mediator of 
this Covenant. Of an argument so comprehensive and containing so 
many details, only the general structure can be indicated. In this 
.argument the standard of authoritative reference assumed is the Old 



24 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Testament, which the orthodox Jew admits to be inspired. (As for 
the Rationalistic, they must first be dealt with as other skeptics.) 
Second. In this argument no other authority is claimed for the New 
Testament in advance, than that it is an authentic narrative. As such, 
it is substantiated by the profane and Jewish history. We then make- 
two heads : 

a.) Because the Time is Passed. — The promised Mediator of the- 
Old Testament must be already come. For the time has passed. (See 
Gen. xlix: 10; Dan. ix : 24-27.) He was to come while the second 
temple was standing. (Hag. ii : 6-9; Mai. iii : 1-3.) He was to 
come while the Jewish polity subsisted; (Gen. xlix: 10,) and while 
Jerusalem was still the capital of that theocracy. (Hag. ii : 6-9 ; Is. 
ii : 3 ; Ixii : l,&c.) This polity and city have now been overwhelmed 
for nearly 1,800 years ; so that the very ability to give genealogical 
evidence of the birth of Christ from David's stock, is now utterly gone ! 
The Messiah's coming was to be signalized by the cessation of types.. 
(Dan. ix : 27.) Last; the Messiah's coming was to be marked by the 
accession of multitudes of Gentiles to the religion of the Old Testa- 
ment. (Seels, ii: 3; xlii ; 1-6; xlix: 6 ; lx : 3, &c.) 

b.) Because He has the appointed Traits. — Jesus of Nazareth, is 
the Person ; because all the qualities and incidents foretold in the Old 
Testament, wonderfully tally with Him and His life. (See Acts iii : 18.) 
The strength of the argument is in the completeness of this correspon- 
dence. In fairly estimating this proof, reference must be made to the- 
doctrines of probabilities. The occurrence of one predicted trait in a 
person would prove nothing. The concurrence of two would not be a 
demonstration ; because that concurrence might be fortuitous. But,, 
when three independent and predicted traits concurred, the proof would 
greatly strengthen ; because the likelihood that chance could account 
for all three, is diminished, in a multiplying ratio. So, as the- 
number of coincident, predicted traits increases, the evidence 
mounts up, by a multiplying ratio, towards absolute certainty. 
Jesus, then, answers the prophetic description in the time of His 
birth. (See above.) In the place; Micah.v: 2. In His nativity 
of a virgin ; Is. vii : 14. In His forerunner ; Mai. iii : 1, &c. In His 
lineage ; Gen. iii : 15, xviii : 18, xlix : 10 : Is. xi : 1 ; Ps.. cxxxii : 1 1 ; 
Is. ix : 7, &c. In His preaching ; Is. lxi : 1-3. In His miracles; Is., 
xxxv: 5-6. In His tenderness and meekness; Is. xlii : 3. In the cir- 
cumstances of His end, viz., His entry into Jerusalem; ZLech. ix : 9. 
Betrayal ; Zech. xi : 12, 13. Rejection and contempt ; Is. liii : 3. Death;: 
liii:8. Mockings therein ;Ps. xxii : 8. Vinegar ; Ps. Ixix .. 211. Piercing ,- 
Zech.xii: 10. Yet no bones broken; Ps. xxxiv: 20. Death with 
malefactors; Is. liii : 9. Honourable burial; Is. liii : 9. Resurrection; 
Ps. xvi : 9, 10, lxviii : 18. Spiritual effusions ; Joel, iii:: 28. Again : 
the Messiah of the Old Testament was to have a wondrous union of 
natures, offices and destinies, which was mysterious t©. the Old Testa- 
ment saints, and absurd to modern Jews; yet was wonderfully realized 
in Jesus. He was to be God, (Ps. ii ; 7 ; Is. ix : 6'.); yet man, (Is. 
ix ; 6.) The history of Jesus, taken with His words,, shows Him both 
human and divine. The Messiah was to be both priest and victim. 
(Ps. ex ; Is. liii.) He was to be an outcast, (Is. liiii,) and a king,. 
(Ps. ii.) So was Jesus. He was to conquer all people, (Ps. xlv: 72,, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 25 

110;) yet, without violence. (Is. xlii : 3; Ps. xlv : 4.) He was to 
combine the greatest contrasts of humiliation and glory. These con- 
trasts are so hard to satisfy in one Person (to all unbelieving Israel it 
looks impossible,) that when we find them meeting in Jesus, it causes 
a very strong evidence to arise, that He is the Mediator. 

3. Hypostatic Union. — The doctrine of the constitution of Christ's 
person, is purely one of Revelation, and involves a mystery (1 Tim. iii : 
16,) as great, perhaps, as that of the Trinity itself Rut though inex- 
plicable, it is not incredible. The nature of the scriptural argument 
by which this twofold nature in one person is established, is analogous 
to that establishing a Trinity in unity. The text nowhere defines the 
doctrine in one passage, as we assert it. Rut our doctrine is a neces- 
sary deduction from tnree sets of Scriptural assertions. First. Jesus 
Christ was properly and literally a man. (See, e. g., Jno. i : 14 ; Gal. 
iv : 4 ; Jno. i : 51; Is. ix : 6 ; Heb. ii : 17 ; Matt, iv : 2 ; Luke ii : 
40,52; Matt, viii: 24; Mark xiii : 32; Jno. xi : 35; Matt, xxvi : 37, 
&c.) Second. Christ is also literally and properly divine. (See e. g., 
Jno. i : 1 ; Rom. ix : 5 ; 1 John v ; 20 ; Is. ix : 6 , Phil, ii : 6 ; Col. ii : 
9 ; Heb. i : 3 ; 1 Tim. iii : 16, &c.) Third. Yet this Man-God is one 
and the same ; in proof of which we need only allude to the fact, that 
in every text speaking of Him, oneness of person, and personal at- 
tributes, are either asserted or implied of Him. In many passages 
the same proposition asserts both natures in one person, (e. g., jno. iii: 
13; 1 Tim. iii: 16.) 

To Socinians, and other errorists, theses passages seem contradictory, 
because being unwilling to admit the "incarnate mystery," they insist 
on explaining away one class of them. The true explanation is, that 
both are true, because of the hypostatic union. By these means such 
seeming paradoxes are to be explained, as those in Mark xiii ; 32, com- 
pared with John v : 20 ; Matt, xi : 27, &c. The first of these verses 
asserts that even the Son does not know the day and hour when the 
earth and heavens shall pass away. The others ascribe omniscience to 
Him. The explanation (and the only one) is that Christ in His human 
nature has a limited knowledge, and in His divine nature, an infinite 
knowledge. The opinions of Gnostics are sufficiently asserted by Hill, 
{loc. cit.) 

Gnostic Theory of Christ's Person. — As they have no currency 
in modern times, I will content myself with briefly reminding you of 
the distinction between the other Gnostics, and those called Docetai. 
Roth parties concurred in regarding matter as the source of all moral, 
evil. Hence, they could not consistently admit the resurrection and 
glorifiaation, either of the saints or of Jesus' body. The Docetai,. 
therefore, taught that Christ never had a literal human body ; but only 
a phantasm of one, on which the malice of His persecutors was spent 
in vain. The others taught that the Aion, who they supposed consti- 
tuted Christ's superior nature, only inhabited temporarily in the man 
Jesus, a holy Jew constituted precisely as other human beings are;, 
and that, at the crucifixion, this Aion flew away to heaven, leaving the.' 
man Jesus to suffer alone. 

The Nestorian view. — The historical events attending the Nesto- 
rian controversy, and the personal merits of Nestorius, I shall not 
discuss. The system aftewards known as Nestorianism was appre- 



26 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

hended by the Catholic Christians, as by ho means a trivial one, or a 
mere logomachy about the theotokos. The true teacher of 
the doctrinal system was rather Theodore of Mopuestia, (a teacher of 
Nestorius,) than the latter prelate. la his hands, it appears to be a 
development of Pelagianism, which it succeeded in date, and an appli- 
cation to the constitution of Christ's person of the erroneous doctrines 
of man's native innocence. Theodoret set out from opposition to 
Apollinaris, who taught that the divine Reason in Christ substituted a 
rational human nature, leaving; Christ only a material and animal 
nature on the human side. According to Theodore, Christ is a sort 
of impersonated symbol of mankind, first as striving successfully 
against trial, and second, as rewarded with glory for this struggle. He 
supposed Christ the Man to exercise a self-determining power of will, 
which, he taught, is necessary to moral merit in any man. Christ, the 
man, then, began His human career, with the Word associated, and 
strengthening His human nature. As Christ the man resisted trial, 
and exhibited His devotion to duty in the exercise of His self-determ- 
ination, He was rewarded by more full and intimate communications 
of divine indwelling, until His final act of devotion was rewarded with 
an ascension, and full communication of the Godhead. The process 
in each gracious soul offers an humble parallel. The indwelling of 
God the Word in Jesus, is not generically unlike that of the Holy 
Ghost in a saint: but only closer and stronger in degree. There are, 
indeed, three grades of this one kind of union, first, that of the Holy 
Ghost, in sanctification ; second, that of the same person, in inspira- 
tion ; third, that of the Word in Christ. And the Nestonians preferred 
rather to speak of the last, as a sunapheia, than a enosis — the preferred 
term of Cyril. 

Doctrinal Consequences. — This view seemed to involve two Pela- 
gian errors; first, that grace is bestowed as the reward of man's right 
exercise of moral powers, (in his own self-determined will,) instead of 
being the gratuitous cause thereof; and second, that inasmuch as the 
human purity of the man Jesus went before, and procured the divine 
indwelling, it is naturally possible for any other man to be perfect in 
advance of grace. Again, from the separation of the nexus between 
the two natures in Christ, there seemed to the Catholics to be a neces- 
sary obscuring of the communication of attributes ; so that Christ's 
sacrifice would no longer be divine and meritorious enough to cover 
■infinite guilt. And thus would be lost the fundamental ground of His 
substitution for us. The whole scheme goes rather to make Christ in- 
carnate rather a symbolical exemplar of the work of God in a believer, 
than the proper redeeming purchase and Agent thereof. Its tendencies, 
then, are Socinian. 

Eutychian View. — The Alexandrine theologians generally leaned 
the other way. Cyril was fond of quoting from the great Athanasius ; 
that while " he allowed Christ was son of God, and God, according to 
the spirit, but son of man, according to the flesh ; but not two natures 
and one son ; the one to be worshipped and the other not : but one 
nature of G-od the Word incarnated, and to be worshipped by single 
worship along with His flesh." They loved to assert the enosis, (u u ifi- 
cation) of the natures, rather than the sunapheia (or conjunction,) of 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 27 

Theodore. They preferred to conceive of Christ as so clothing Himself 
with human nature, as to assimilate it, by a species of subusmption, 
with His divinity. Hence the error of Eutych.es was prepared ; that 
while the mediatorial person was constituted from two natures, it ex- 
isted only in one, the divine. This error is as fatal to a proper con- 
ception of Christ's mediatorial work, as the Nestorian. By really 
destroying the humanity in Christ, from the moment of His birth, 
it gives us a Redeemer who has no true community of nature with us ; 
and so does not render a human obedience, nor pay the human penalty 
in our room and stead. The creed of Chalcedon, intermediate between 
these two extremes, is undoubtedly the scriptural one, as it has been 
adopted by all orthodox churches, ancient and modern, and is the basis 
of the propositions of the Westminster Assembly on this point. You 
have these symbols within your reach ; and I shall not here repeat 
them. 

Orthodox Views. — For Orthodox creed of Chalcedon, see Mosheim, 
vol. i, p. 866. For our own, see Confession of Faith, ch. 8, §2. This 
doctrine, however inexplicable, is not incredible ; because it is no more 
mysterious than the union of two substances, spirit and body, into one 
human person, in ourselves. Yet, who is not conscious of his own per- 
sonality? That the infinite Creator should assume a particular rela- 
tion to one special part of His creation, the man Jesus is not impossible, 
seeing He bears intimate relations (e. g., as providential upholder,) to all 
the rest. That an infinite spirit should enter into personal union with 
a man, is surely less mysterious than that a finite spirit should consti- 
tute a personal union with a body; because the infinite and almighty 
possesses, so to speak, more flexibility to enter into such union ; and be- 
cause the intimate union of spirit to spirit, is less mysterious than 
that of spirit with body. (A perfect analogy is not asserted.) 

Hypostatic Union ground of the Efficacy of Christ's work. 
Socinian objection quashed. — This Hypostatic union is the corner- 
stone of our redemption. The whole adaptation of the Mediatorial per- 
son to its work depends on it, as will be shown in the discussson of 
heads 5th, 6th. The general result of the Hypostatic union is stated 
well in the Confession of Faith, Ch. 8, § 7, last part. This is that 
koinonia idiomaton which we hold, in common with the early 
Fathers, repudiating the ^Lutheran idea of the attributes of Divinity 
being literally conferred on the humanity ; which is absurd and impos- 
sible. Apt instances of this koinonia may be seen in John iii : 13: 
Acts xx. 28, xvii : 31; Markii: 10; Gral. iv : 4; and Rom. i: 17, or 
iii 21 ; 1 Cor. ii ; 8. Hence, it is, that Mediatorial acts, performed 
in virtue of either nature, have all the dignity or worth, belonging to 
the Mediatorial person as made up of both natures. Socinians do, in- 
deed, object: that inasmuch as only the creature could, in the nature 
of things, be subjected to the law, and to penalty, the active and pas- 
sive obedience of Christ have, after all, only a creature worth; and it 
is a mere legal fiction, to consider them as possessed of the infinite 
worth of a divine nature, since the divine nature did not especially 
render them. The answer is; The -person possessed of a divine nature, 
rendered them. If the Socinian would honestly admit the ■personal 
union as a thing which (though inscrutable) is real and literal, his ob- 



28 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

jection would be relinquished. For then, many analogies of human 
persons (not perfect indeed, but applicable fairly) would show that this- 
koinonia is not unnatural even. We shall see that the common sense 
and conscience of men always estimate the acts and sufferings of a 
compounded person (constituted of two natures) according to the dig- 
nity of the higher nature, to whichever of them those acts or sufferings' 
may specially belong ; e. g. There are many bodily affections, as appe- 
tite, pain, which we characterize as distinctively corporeal ; and yet, 
had not our bodies souls in them, these affections could have no place. 
Why then is it incredible, that the divine substance in the Medatorial 
person should be the ground of a peculiar value in the human suffer- 
ings of that person; though in strictness of speech, the divine could not be 
the seat of the suffering ? Again, corporeal sufferings of martyrs have 
a moral value, which can only be attributed to the fact that those suf- 
fering men were not brutes, but spiritual and moral beings ; while yet 
the soul may have been unconscious of the pangs, through spiritual joy,, 
or other cause. I argue, also, from the fact, that moral character is* 
given to merely physical acts of men, because of the character of the 
volition prompting those acts. Now, I pray, did not the will of the 
Logos prompt all the acts of active and passive obedience performed 
by the human nature? If when my bones and muscles in my arm go 
through identically the same functions, with the same stick, to beat a 
dangerous dog, and to beat my friend, one physical act has the spiritual 
character of lawfulness, and the other physically identical act has the 
spiritual character of sinfulness, because of the concern of my volition 
in them, why should it be thought a thing increbible, that the human 
sufferings of Christ should have a divine character, when prompted by 
the volition of the divine nature in His person? And is not the bodily 
pain of a man more important than that of a dog? It is enough, how- 
ever, to show that the infinite dignity of Christ's divine nature is, in 
Scripture, given as the ground of the infinite value of that work. See 
Heb. ix : 13. 14, vii: 16,24; Johniii: 16; 1 Pet. i : 18,19; Ps. xl : 
6; Heb. x: 5-14. 

4. Does Christ mediate in both Natures? — The question, whether 
Christ performs the functions of Mediator in both natures is funda- 
mental. Romanists limit them to the human nature, in order to make 
more plausible room for human mediators. They plead such passages 
as Phil, ii : 7, 8 : 1 Tim. ii : 5, and the dialectical argument, that the 
divinity being the offended party, it is absurd to conceive of it as me- 
diating between the offender and itself. 

Now, it must be distinguished, that ever since the incarnation, the 
Logos may perform functions of incommunicable divinity,, inalienable 
to Him as immutable ; such as sitting on the throne of the universe and 
possessing incommunicable attributes ; in which the humanity can no 
more have part, than in that creative work, which Christ performed 
before His incarnation. So, likewise, the humanity performed func- 
tions, in which it is not necessary to suppose the Logos had any 
other concern than a general providential one ; such as eating, sleep- 
ing, drinking. But these were not a part of the Mediatorship. We as- 
sert that, in all the Mediatoral acts proper, both natures To proso- 
pon THEANTHRoroN act concurrently, according to their peculiar pro- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 29 

perties. This we prove, 1st, by the fact, that in Christ's priestly work, 
the divine nature operated and still operates, as well as the human. 
■See 1 Cor. ii; 8: Heb. ix : 14; John x: 18. Even in this work of 
suffering and dying, see how essential the concurrent actions of the 
divine nature were ! Else, there would have been none of the autocracy 
as to His own life, necessary for His vicarious work ; nor would there 
have been strength to bear an infinite penalty in one day. Only the 
Omuiscient can intercede for all. Hence, we argue a fortiori, that if 
His divinity concurred in His priestly work, the part usually supposed 
most irrelevant to deity, much more does it concur in His prophetic and 
kingly. See Matt, xi ; 27, xxviii ; 18. 2d. If Christ does not per- 
form His Mediatorial work in His divine nature as well as His human, 
He could not have been in any sense the Mediator of Old Testament 
saints ; because their redemption was completed before He was incar- 
nate. Did Romanists attend to the fact, that it is the very design and 
result of the Covenant of Graee, that the persons of the trinity should 
act "economically," in their several offices of redemption, they would 
not have raised the inconsistent objection about the Godhead's propi- 
tiating the Godhead. The Son, having become man's Surety, now acts 
economically and officially for him, in his stead propitiating the Father, 
who officially represents the majesty of the offended trinity. Besides, 
unless the Romanists will assert not only two wills, but these two in 
opposition, in the Mediatorial person, the divine will of God the Son 
must, on their scheme, have concerned itself with propitiating Cod ; 
the same difficulty ! 

One remark applies to all His mediatorial functions also ; that the 
will of both natures concurred in them. 

Why must the Mediator be Man 1 — The demands of Christ's me- 
diatorial work required that Christ should be proper and very man. 
Mankind had fallen, and was conscienee-struck, hostile, and fearful 
towards God. Hence it was desirable that the Daysman should appear 
in his nature as his brother, in order to encourage confidence, to allure 
to a familiar approach, and quiet guilty fears. To such a being as 
sinful man, personal intercourse with God would have been intolerably 
dreadful; (Gen. iii : 8; Ex. xx : 19,) and even an angel would have 
appeared too terrible to his fears. 

Again. The Bible assures us that one object gained by the incarna- 
tion of Christ, was fuller assurance of His sympathy, by His experi- 
mental acquaintance with all the woes of our fallen condition. (Heb. 
ii : 17, 18; iv : 15 to v : 2.) The experience of every Christian under 
trial of affliction, testifies to the strength of this reasoning by the con- 
solation which Christ's true humanity gives Him. It is very true that 
the Son, as omniscient God, can and does figure to Himself conceptions of 
all possible human trials, just as accurate as experience itself; but His 
having experienced them in human nature enables our weak faith to 
•grasp the consolation better* 

Another purpose of God, in clothing our Redeemer with human 
nature, was to leave us a perfect human example. The importance 
and efficacy of teaching by example, need not be unfolded here. (See 
1 Pet. ii: 21 ; Heb. xii : 2, &c.) 

In the fourth place, Christ's incarnation was necessary, in order to 
establish a proper basis for that legal union between Him and His elect, 



30 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

which should make Him bearer of their imputed guilt, and them par- 
takers of His imputed righteousness, and of His exaltation. (See 1 
Cor. xv: 21.) It was necessary that man's sin should be punished m 
the nature of man, in order to render the substitution more natural and 
proper. (Rom. viii ; 3.) Had the deity been united with some angelic,, 
or other creature, the imputation of man's sin to that Person, and its 
punishment in that foreign nature would have appeared less reasonable. 
(See Heb. ii : 14-16.) So, likewise, the obedience rendered in another 
nature than man's, would not have been so reasonable a ground for 
raising man's race to a share in the Mediator's blessedness. 

And this leads us to add, last; that a created nature was absolutely 
essential to the Mediator's two works, of obeying in man's stead, and 
suffering for his guilt. For the obedience, no other nature would have 
been so appropriate as man's. And none but a creature could come- 
under law , assume a subject position, and work out an active righteous- 
ness. God is above law, being Himself the great law-giver. For the 
other vicarious work, suffering a penalty, not only a created, but a cor- 
poreal nature is necessary. Angels cannot feel bodily death, and brutes 
could not experience spiritual;- but both are parts of the penalty of 
sin. The divine nature is impassible, and unchangeable in its blessed- 
ness. Hence, Heb. x; 5; ix : 22, &c. 

5. Why the Mediator must be God. — It is of the highest impor- 
tance to prove that the mediatorial offices could not be performed with- 
out the divine nature. (See Is. xlv : 22, Jer. xvii : 5-7, xxiii : 6J) 
Because this is one of the most overwhelming arguments against Arians 
and Socinians. We assert that a purpose to save elect men being sup- 
posed in God by a mediatorial plan, the very necessities of the case 
required that this mediator should be very and proper God. But as 
this was substantially argued in Lect. xvi, when proving the divinity of 
the Holy Ghost and the Son, the student is referred to that place. 

Is Christ's Prophetic work essential, or, as Socinians say, 
only useful 1 — But the fifth question of our Syllabus raises a point 
in this direction, which requires fuller explanation. The scope of the 
Socinian system is to find a common religion, including the fewest pos.- 
sible essential elements. Hence, they like to represent that virtuous 
Pagans may belong to this common religion, holding the doctrines of 
Natural Theology. The consequence is, that the Socinians, while 
speaking many handsome things of Jesus Christ as a messenger from 
God, still concur with other Deists and infidels, in depreciating the 
necessity of Revelation. They say that the Scriptures are valuable, 
but not essential. We are thus led again to the old question of the 
necessity of revelation. 

Partial grounds of argument corrected. — Let us not assert this 
on the usual partial grounds. The case is too often put by our friends 
as though the tall alone necessitated a revelation ; the effects of sin in 
blinding the mind and conscience are too exclusively mentioned. Thus, 
there is an implied admission that a revelation is, in man's case, an ex- 
ceptional expedient, caused by the failure of his general plan. Thus, 
the objection is suggested, which Socinians, and other enemies of inspi- 
ration have not failed to put in form ; and which many of us are in- 
clined perhaps to feel, as though the idea of a revelation were unnat- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 3-1 

ural, and hence not probable. The cavil is, that the analogy of all 
creation discloses this plan: Our wise and good God, in creating each 
order of sentient beings, surrounded them with all the appointed con- 
ditions for their well-being, by the established course of nature. Hav- 
ing made fishes for the water, he made water for the fishes ; the grass 
is for oxen, and the oxen for grass; the birds for the air, and the air 
for the birds. Every order, by living within the natural condi- 
tions provided for it secures its appropriate end. But according to the 
Orthodox, man, the noblest, the rational creature, cannot fulfil the ends 
of his being, immortal blessedness, by his natural means. A supernat- 
ural expedient must be found against the general analogy ; or else 
man's existence is a frightful failure. This, they urge, is unnatural, 
discreditable to God, and improbable. 

Eevelation necessary to Holy Creatures. — Now I meet it by 
asserting that, to make a rational creature dependent on a revelation of 
God for his spiritual welfare, is not unnatural, or extraordinary ; but 
for all spiritual creatures the universal, and strictly natural condition. 
It does not arise out of man's sin only ; the truth holds as well of 
angels, and all other rational creatures, if there are others. We must 
remember that none originally had God in their debt, to assure their 
holiness and bliss ; but were naturally under this relation, bound to 
obey Him perpetually ; free from evil as long as they did so ; but sub- 
ject to His wrath whenever they sinned. Now holy creatures were not 
infallible, nor omniscient. Their wills were right and free, but not 
indefectible. Bound to an unending career of perfect obedience, they 
would have been to all eternity liable to mistake and sin and death. 
Now, when a finite wisdom and rectitude are matched against an infinite 
series of duties to be done, of choices to be made, each naturally im- 
plying some possibility of a wrong choice, that possibility finally 
mounts up from a probability to a moral certainty, that all would some 
day fail. How, then, could an angel, or holy Adam, inherit immutable 
blessedness forever ? Only by drawing direct guidance from the in- 
fallible, infinite Mind. Thus we see that the enjoyment of its appro- 
priate revelation by each order, is the necessary condition of its well- 
being ; a condition as natural, original, and universal as its own moral 
nature and obligations. If Gabriel had not his revelation he would not 
be an ' elect angel.' Do I mean &. written document 1 Do I speak of 
parchment and ink? No; but of that which is the essence of a Reve- 
lation, a direct communication from the infinite Mind, to instruct the 
finite. 

Revelation not Anomalous. — Thus we may, if we choose, admit 
the analogy which the Socinian claims, and find it wholly against him. 
Our Bible is not an exceptional providence ; it is in strict accordance 
with God's method towards all reasonable creatures. If our race had 
none, this would be the fatal anomaly against us. 



32 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

LECTURE XXXIX. 



SYLLABUS. 
THE MEDIATOR. (Continued.) 

5. Is there any other Mediator between God and man, than Jesus Christ ? 
{Against Papists.) 

For Popish views, see Council of Trent, Decrteum 25th. Cat. Rom., Pt* 
3, Ch. 2, Que. 4-7, Pt 4. Ch. 6. Turrettin, Loc. xiv, Que. 4. Ridgeley, 
Qu. xxxvi. For Refutation, Essays on Romanism, Ch. 15. Turrettin, as 
above. Calvin and Dick. 

6. How was Christ inducted in to His office ? 

Dick, Lect. 54. Turrettin, Loc. xiii, Que. 12, Loc. xiv, Que. 6. Ridge- 
ley, Que. xli, xlii, 

7. How many offices does Christ fulfil as Mediator, and why these ? 
Turrettin, Loc, xiv, Que. 5. Dick, Lect. 54. Calvin's Inst., Bk. ii, Ch. 
15. Conf. of Faith, ch. viii, § 5 to end. Ridgeley, Que. xliii. 

5. Christ only Mediator. Rome's Argument for Contrary. — 
The Apostle Paul teaches us, (1 Tim. ii : 5,) that as there is but one 
God, there is only "one mediator between God and man, the man 
Christ Jesus." Rome seeks to evade this and similar testimonies, by- 
speaking of a primary, and a secondary mediation, reserving the 
second exclusively to Christ. The activity of angels and dead saints 
as secondary mediators, Rome argues, first, from the benevolence and 
affection of these pure spirits. This kindness we daily experience at the 
hands of the saints while alive ; and the Saviour (Luke xv : 7,) seems to 
ascribe similar feelings to the angels. The Church believes that the 
dead saints retain a local interest in the places and people which they 
loved while living; and she thinks that Dan. x: 13, teaches the angels, 
as ministers of God's providence, have their districts, and even their 
individuals, (Matt, xviii : 10,) whom they serve and watch: Second. 
Rome urges that numerous cases exist in which the mediatorial inter- 
vention of oue saint for another occurs, in the Bible. Of this the most 
obvious instance is the requesting of the brethren's prayers (e. g., 1 
Thess. v: 25; 2d Thess. ii i ; 1,) and this case alone, Rome thinks, 
would be enough to rebut the Protestant objections that such interces- 
sion interferes with the mediatorial honors of Christ. But, say they, 
there are numerous instances of more definite intervention, where the 
merit of a saint availed for other men expressly ; or where, (better 
still,) the pardon of men was suspended on the efforts of some emi- 
nently meritorious saint in their behalf. (See Gen. xx : 7 ; xxvi ; 5 ; 
1 Kgs. xi : 12, et passim ; Job xlii : 8; Luke vii: 3-6. And they 
assert the actual intercession of angels in heaven is taugnt. (Gen. 
xlviii : 16; Rev. v: 8, or viii : 3.) 

Rome argues also, reciprocally, that the worship of saints and angels 
implies their mediation ; because the only thing for which we can peti- 
tion them, consistently with theism, is their intercession. Hence all 
the rational and scriptural arguments in favour of saint-worship, are 
by inference, arguments in favour of their mediation. See, then, such 
considerations, aud such texts as these : God commands an appropriate 
reverence of teachers, magistrates, parents, kings. Can we believe that 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 33 

He intends no proportionable honor of these more beneficent and ma- 
jestic beings ? Can it be wrong to ask their aid with Christ, when we 
should esteem it pious to ask the aid of Christian friends on earth ? 
Surely these glorified creatures have not become less benevolent to- 
wards us, or less acceptable to Christ, by reaching heaven ? Then 
see scriptural instances ; (Gen. xviii : 2, 23 ; xix : 1 ; xxxii : 26 ; Josh. 
v: 14. 

The closing argument of Rome is from tradition, and the Apocryphan. 

Replies. — Now, the renly is, first, that all such appeal to the medi- 
ation of the saints in heaven, or of angels, is superstition. The Scrip- 
tures uniformly represent, that the dead are severed from all earthly 
relations, and are done with all earthly interests, even pious ones. 
The simple idea of asking their prayers for us, if we had any access to 
them, (which we know we have not,) would not be worse than idle su- 
perstition. But, second, the wish to appeal to them reveals always a 
tendency which is derogatory to Christ's priestly work. Witness the 
perpetual inclination of Romanists, to shove Christ into the back 
ground, and pray jto their tutelar saints rather than Him. Third, the 
idea that their mediatory access is founded on their merits, without 
which dogmo, Rome's whole scheme here would be naught, is expressly 
injurious to Christ, utterly false, and indeed, impious. No one who 
comprehended the rudiments of either the Covenant of Works, or of 
that of Grace, would ever dream of making the supererogatory merit of 
an unfallen, much less of a fallen creature, a basis for an imputed 
righteousness. In that sense, the creature cannot merit. Take the case 
of Abraham, Gen. xx : 7. The Romish argument is ruined by the 
fact that Absaham was himself "justified by faith. If he was himself 
a sinner, accepted in the righteousness of Another, how could he have 
supererogator}'- merit to spare for a fellow-sinner? Job is mentioned, 
xlii: 8, as sacrificing for his erring friends; because he was righteous. 
But see the 6th verse, where Job avows his utter sinfulness. Surely, 
then, be was not righteous in such a sense as to be a meritorious medi- 
ator. Job was directed to sacrifice for his friends. What? Himself? 
No ; but bullocks and rams typical of the " Lamb of God that taketh. 
away the sin of the world." This tells the whole story : that his in- 
tervention was ministerial, and not mediatorial. As to King David, 
1 Kings xi: 12, compare David's^own language, Ps. xxxii : 1, 2. It is 
God's regard for His own gracious covenant with David, and His own 
fidelity, which leads Him to favour Solomon. David himself, although 
comparatively a faithful ruler, was indebted to God's mercy both in 
his personal and official capacities, for escaping condemnation. 

Chiefly, the Doctrine of Rome Idolatrous. — But, fourth, this 
appeal to saintly or angelic mediation is idolatrous, and a robbery of 
God. To suppose that these creatures in heaven can hear and answer 
is a practical ascription to them of God's peculiar attributes. Espe- 
cially is this true of the more popular gods and goddesses in the 
Popish pantheon, the Virgin, Peter, Gabriel, &c; to whom Romanists 
generally pray, the world over. They must have omnipresence, to be 
with their various votaries in different lands ; omniscence, to discrimin- 
ate, understand, and judge wisely of the multiplied requests ; omnipo- 
tence, to bear the burden of care laid upon them ; infinite benevolence, 



34 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

to be willing to care for others to so boundless a degree ; and immutd* 
bility, to be a secure reliance, especially for the wants of a priceless 
soul. 

No Created Angel Mediated.— -The question of angelic media- 
tion may be easily disposed of. The only instances in which an angel 
is worshipped, are those of the worship of the Angel of the Covenant, 
the eternal Word. Let the student examine all the cases of angel-wor- 
ship claimed by the Romanists, and he will find that each one is a 
worship of that Divine Person. We are referred to Rev. v : 8, and 
yiii : 8, for instances of angelic mediation. In the first, the odours 
presented by the four living creatures, and the four and twenty elders, 
are their own. They both, beyond doubt, symbolize the ransomed 
Church ; and the prayers they present are simply their own. In Rev. 
viii : 3, we assert that the great Angel, who takes the golden censer, 
and offers the incense, is Christ ; the Angel of the Covenant again. 
It is objected that the Redeemer has already appeared in the scene, as 
"the Lamb in the midst of the throne." This is no valid objection to 
our exposition. The natures and functions of Christ are so glorious 
and full, that one symbol fails to exhaust them. Hence the multipli- 
cation of symbols for the same Divine Figure, even in the same scene, 
is not unusual in the prophets. The symbol of the Lamb represents 
Christ's humanity, the victim of justice, while that of the Angel con- 
veys to us Christ the prophet, and intercessor, and king ; a priest upon 
his throne. There is, then, no exegetical difficulty in receiving this 
angel as a symbol of Christ ; and the coherency of this view, with the 
whole passage, and the whole Scripture, every way recommends it. 

In conclusion, the powerful demonstration which the Scripture gives 
us against creature worship, is the strongest proof against creature med- 
iation ; for if they mediated, they must be worshipped. And the 
whole tenor of Scripture is, to represent Christ's tenderness as so great, 
and His priestly work as so efficacious, that there is neither need nor 
room, for any heavenly Meditator after Him. "We are complete in 
Him, which is the head of all principality and power." (Col. ii : 10.) 
Let the student study the inspired argument of that Epistle., 

6. Christ's Anointing. When?- — The words Messiah, Christ, mean 
" Anointed," in allusion to the spiritual unction bestowed on Christ. 
This was appropriate to all His offices; witness the anointing of Aaron, 
Saul, David, Solomon, Elisha. The thing typified by the oil, was 
spiritual endowment ; and this was bestowed without measure on Christ. 
(See Ps. xlv: 2; Is. xi: 2; xlii : 1; lxi : 1, &c; Matt, iii : 16; Jno. 
iii : 34 ; Acts x : 38, &c.) The reasons of this anointing were, not a 
journey into heaven during the forty days' temptation ; a notion un- 
known to Scripture, and moreover refuted by Luke ii '- 46, 47 ; but 
His birth and baptism especially. The immediase seat of these spir- 
itual influences was His humanity. His divinity was already infinite, 
perfect, and immutable. He is Himself a source of the Holy Ghost, 
as God. The consequence was, to make Him, not infinite as to His 
humanity, nor incapable of progress ; but perfectly holy, and wise, pure 
zealous, faithful, &c, above all others. All forms of graces appropriate 
to a perfect man acted in Him, in such manners as were suitable to His 
Person, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 35 

7. Christ's Offices Three, and Why? — That Christ fulfils, as 
Mediator, the three offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, is proved by 
this argument. We find these three offices predicated °of Him in 
Scripture in a specific and pointed manner, while all other terms of 
function or service applied to Him as "Servant," "Elect," "Messen- 
ger," &c, are rather to be regarded as general appelatives. For the 
prophetic office, see Heb. i : 1; Is. xi : 2, xlii : 1,2, lxi : 1; Deut. 
xviii: 15, with Acts iii : 22-26; Is. lix : 12; Johniv: 25. For the 
priestly, see Ps. ex: 4; Heb. viii: 1, &c, passim; 1 John ii : 1. 
Kingly, Ps. ii : 6; Is. ix : 6, 7 ; Ps. ex : 1 ; Zech. vi: 12-14, &c- 1 
Cor. i. 30. 

That the offices of Christ are these three, we prove again by showing 
in detail, that all His mediatorial works can be refered to one or more 
of these three classes. All is either instructing, or atoning, or inter- 
ceding, or conquering and ruling, or several of them together. The 
necessity for these offices, (which we show,) also proves it. Man lay 
under three evils — ignorance, guilt, rebellion. A.nd Redemption con- 
sists of three parts — announcing, purchasing, and applying salvation. 



LECTUKE XL. 



SYLLABUS. 
MEDIATORIAL OFFICES. 

8. Prove that Christ is a Prophet. Under how many periods and modes did 
He fulfil this office f In what points was He superior to other prophets? 

Turrettin, Loc. xiv, Que. 7, § 3, 4, and 12. Dick, Lect. 54th and 55th. 
Ridgeley, Que. xliii. 

9. Prove that Christ is truly a Priest. What the several parts of the priet's 
functions. "What the peculiarities of Christ's priesthood. 

Turrettin, Loc. xiv, Que. 89. Dick, Lect. 56. Ridgeley, Que. xliv,§i 
and ii. 

10. Prove, against Socinians, &c, the necessity of an atonement. 
Turrettin, Loc. xiv, Que. 10. § 16-23. Dick, Lect. 56. Hill, Bk. iv, ch. 
3, § 1, Turrettin, Loc. iii, Que. 19. Ridgeley, Que xliv, § iii. Magee on 
Atonement. A. A. Hodge on Atonement, chs. 5th and 6th. Watson's 
Theo. Institutes, ch. xix. 

8. The proof has already been presented, that Christ performs the office 
of a Prophet. 

Christ's Prophetic Work. Its true Stages. — The Phrophet is 
God's Spokesman, nabi, either to enforce, reveal, or predict, Christ, 
in the highest sense, did all. For definition of His prophetic work, 
see Cat., Que. 24. This work of our Saviour had three different stages. 



36 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

1st, from the fall to His baptism by John; 2d, during His personal 
ministry until His ascension ; 3d, thence to the final consummation. 
During all these stages, He has carried on His prophetic work, by these 
agencies common to the three; His Revelation given to us by the 
hand of pi-ophets and apostles ; His Spirit applying that revelation, 
and giving understanding and love ; His providence, directing our con- 
duct and the events happening us, including a constant, universal, and 
particular control of our mental laws and states, as well as physical. 
(This trenches on His Kingly powers.) But, during the first stage, 
Christ acted as prophet, in addition, by His theophanies, for which see 
Kengstenberg's Christol, vol. i, pp. 164-170, and His prophets, see 1 
Pet, i: 10, 11. 

During the second stage, Christ literally fulfilled the work of a 
prophet in His own person, by inculcating truths known, revealing 
truths, and predicting future events. During the last stage, He gave 
His Holy Grhost to Apostles and Evangelists, thus enduing their 
teachings with His own authority. See John xvi; 12-15 ; Eph. iv: 12. 

Wherein superior to human prophets. — Dick contrasts Christ's 
prophetic work with that of all other prophets, in its fullness, its per- 
spicuity, (arising from His fuller endowments and knowledge, as well 
as from a clearer dispensation,) realities instead of tyyes, its authority, 
arising from His divinity, and its efficacy, arising from His divine power 
to send forth Spiritual influences along with His word. But when 
we say, Christ was fuller as a revealer, let us not fall into Socinian 
error, who, to make a notus vindice dignus, while they deny Christ's 
vicarious work, teach that Christ not only developed, but made sub- 
stantial additions to and alterations in the Old Testament. A perfect 
and holy Cod could not reveal a faulty code. See also Matt, v: IV ; 
Mark xii : 31 ; Rom. xiii : 9. And if the pretended cases of altera- 
tion be examinee, they will be found supported by the teachings of 
the Old Testament. 

9. Christ the true Priest. — The proof that Christ is a true and 
real Priest, would begin with texts such as Ps. ex : 4; Heb. v : 5, viii ; 
1, et passim, (whose trick is to confine Christ's priestly work to heaven, 
for, no suffering is there — ergo, He can't be a suffering Atoner) 
But as the Socinians evade these, by saying that so Peter, (1 Eph. ii : 
9,) Rev. i : 6, &c, call Christians quasi priests, because they present to 
Cod the oblation of a holy life ; we must substantiate the reality of 
Christ's priestly work, by proceeding to prove that He literally per- 
forms the two functions thereof, sacrifice and intercession. This course 
of argument leads us to anticipate, of course, those proofs by which 
the reality of a vicarious atonement, and intercession founded thereon, 
are evinced. We now, therefore, merely name them. Christ is called 
and appointed Priest, with peculiar emphasis. Heb. vii : 20. He is 
the antitype of a long line of unquestioned priests. Heb. viii : 4, 5, 
ix: 11. Surely it is not unreasonable to expect at least as much sub- 
stantial reality in the body, as in the shadow it casts before ! Again: 
the typical sacrifices of the law contained the true vicairous idea; but 
they represented Christ's. Last : it is expressly said He made His 
soul a sacrifice for sin by dying. Christians are only said to make their 
lilies an oblation of gratitude, they still living. See Rom. xii; 1. 







OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 37 

The peculiarities of Christ's priesthood are; 1. The dignity of His 
person; 2, the solemnity of His appointment, by an oath ; 3. His com- 
bining royalty and priesthood like Melchisedec; 4. His having, like 
him, neither predecessor, nor successor; because, 5. His oblation had 
such infinite value and complete efficacy, that, 6. It grounded at once 
an everlasting and all prevalent intercession ; and that, 7. Not only for 
one man, or race, but for all the Elect. 

10. Necessity or Satisfaction argued from God's perfections. — 
The argument for the necessity of an atonement proceeds chiefly on the 
question, whether distributive justice is an essential moral attribute of 
God ; or whether, as Socinians assert, there is nothing in His nature 
which renders it less natural and proper for Him to remit guilt without 
satisfaction, than to create, or leave uncreated a given thing. The Socin- 
ians, as we have seen, in order to evade the doctrine of a vacarious atone- 
ment, deny both the necessity of it, and the essential justice of God. 

Bear in mind, then, that in this whole argument we attribute to God 
all the perfections which make Him an immutable and infinite Being. 
We shall not pause to argue these against Socinians, but refer you to 
your previous course of theology. 

Holiness, Justice, and Truth. — a.) The Scriptures ascribe to God 
holiness, righteousness, and justice, in a sense which shows them to be 
essential attributes. Seels, vi : 3 ; Ps„ lxxxix : 14, v: 4; Gen, xviii ; 
25; Exod. xxxiv: 7; Hab. i : 13; Rom. i : 18,32, ii : 6-11, iii : 6, 
&c, &c. Some of these passager bring to view His justitia universalis, 
or the general rectitude of His nature ; and some His administrative 
justice, as dealing with His moral creatures. Now, we argue from the 
former, that since God is immutable, and this perfection is essential, 
He will not, and by a moral necessity cannot, be affected by moral evil 
as He is by good. It is impossible that His feeling and will can con- 
found the two, can fail to be opposed to sin, and favourable to recti- 
tude. But God, while His will is governed by His own perfections, 
is absolutely free ; so that no doubt His conduct will follow His will. 
God's distributive justice we naturally conceive as prompting Him to 
give every one his due. As naturally as well being is the just equiva- 
lent of obedience, just so naturally is suffering the equivalent of sin ; 
and justice as much requires the punishment of sin, as the reward of 
merit. To fail in apportioning its desert to either, is real injustice. 
Now, does not God assert that His ways are equal 1 Shall not the like 
rule guide Him which He imposes on us] See, then, Prov. xvii : 15 ; 
Rom. ii : 6-11. 

The necessity not physical — But the necessity which we assert 
for God's punishing guilt is only moral. It is not a physical necessity 
like that which ensures that fire will burn, supposing the presence of 
fuel, and that water will wet, supposing its application. Here, then, 
falls the cavil of Socinus, that if retributive justice be made an essen- 
tial attribute of God, its exercise must be conceived of as inevitable 
in every case, because of God's immutability, (as we call it,) so that 
mercy in every case would be impossible. Divine immutability does 
not imply that God must ever act in modes mechanically identical ; but 
that His actings must always be consistent with the same set of essen- 
tial attributes. As circumstances chauge, His very immutability re- 



38 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

quires a change of outward actings. Again ; for God to effectuate a 
given part of His decrees of mercy, when, in time, the conditions of 
that execution are first in existence, is no change of purpose in Him. 
When God passes from wrath to reconciliation, as to a given sinner, 
it is no change in Him. The change is in the sinner. The same attri- 
butes which demanded wrath before, now demand peace : because the 
sinner's guilt is gone. The proper view of God's immutable perfec- 
tions, therefore, leads us to conclude, that without an atonement they 
would render pardon of sin absolutely and universally impossible; but 
that, an atonement being provided, they offer no obstacle to pardon. 
Since God has seen fit to pledge His truth to the execution of penal 
sanctions, this attribute also necessitates their execution. He has 
threatened. See Num. xxiii : 19. Now He cannot truthfully retract. 
This is enhanced by the repetitions, energy, and oaths with which He 
has said and sworn that the wicked shall not enter into His rest. 

God's Glory His own properest End. — b.) We shall not say, as 
Hill incautiously does in one place, that the fact God is a Lawgiver is 
the first principle on which the doctrine of the atonement rests; al- 
thougn we shall, in its proper place, assign it due importance. The 
importance of God's justice being protected, does not arise only or 
chiefly from the fact that the order of His universal Empire is con- 
cerned therein. God Himself, and not His creature's well-being, is 
the proper ultimate end of His own actings, as well as of our deeds of 
piety ; a doctrine repugnant indeed to all Socinian and rational theo- 
ries, but founded in reason and Scripture. If the perfections and 
rights of God are such that it is proper all other beings should love 
and serve Him supremely, by what argument can it be proved that He 
should not do so likewise 1 Again : He being before all things, and 
having all the motives and purposes for making all things from eternity, 
while as yet nothing was, must have found those motives only in Him- 
self. He being the only Thing existent, there was no where else to find 
them. Third: If creatures ought to render the supreme homage of 
their powers and being to God, ought not He to receive it ? 1 Cor. x : 
31. Last, to make any thing else the ultimate End of the Universe, 
deposes God, and exalts that something to the true post of deity ; to 
which God is made to play the part of an almighty convenience. Let 
human pride be pulled down. As for Scriptures, see Prov. xvi: 4: Is. 
lxi; 3 ; Rom. xi : 36. 

Satisfying His own Justice therefore His chief Motive. — God 
ought, therefore, to regard transgression, which outrages His holy at- 
tributes, and excites His wrath, in a very different way from that pro- 
per for us creatures, sinners ourselves, when our fellow-sinners offend us. 
It may be very true that it is good, magnanimous, for one of us to for- 
give injury without satisfaction, and to extirpate our indignation for 
the sake of rescuring our fellow-creature from suffering the punish- 
ment; but the reasoning does not hold, when applied to the Supreme. 
The executing of His good pleasure, the illustration of His perfections 
are, for Him, more proper ends than the continued well-being of any 
or all sinful worlds, bestowed at the expense of His attributes. It is 
a more proper and noble thing that God should please Himself in the 
acting out of His own infinitely holy and excellent attributes, than 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 39 

that He should please His whole creation by bestowing impunity on 
guilty creatures. And, therefore, not only do reasons which arise out 
of God's moral relations to His creatures as their Ruler, but yet more 
reasons arising directly out of His own supremacy and righteousness, 
require Him to punish guilt without fail. 

Socinian obcections. Ans. by 4 Distinctions. — Socinians clamor- 
ously object, that we who teach the necessity of an atonement, strip 
God of those qualities which in all others would be most noble, gene- 
rous and admirable ; a willingness to overlook His own resentment, 
and magnanimously forgive without payment of the injury, where 
penitence was expressed. That we represent God as an odious and 
cruel Being, who would rather see His erring creatures damned, no 
matter how penitent, than sacrifice His own pique ; and who is deter- 
mined to pour out His revenge somewhere, if not on the sinner, or his 
substitute, before He will be satisfied. These cavils are already an- 
swered by the above view. For a private man to act thus would be 
unamiable ; he is himself a sinner. God has told him, "Vengeance 
is Mine;" and the supreme rule of the man's life is, that he shall do 
every thing, forgiving injuries among the rest, for God's pleasure and 
honour. But God is Himself the supreme End of all His doings, as 
well as Chief Magistrate of the universe. Turrettin, Hill, &c, also 
appeal to other distinctions, to rebut these objections. Four things 
may be conssdered in a transgression, viewed as against a human ruler. 
The debt contracted thereby, the wrath or indignation excited, the 
moral defilement contracted by the transgressor in the eyes of the in- 
jured party, and the guilt, or obligation to legal penalty, incurred. 
Now, the plausibility of the Socinian cavil arises wholly from regard- 
ing the first three elements of sin, and studiously averting the eyes from 
the fourth. So far as the injury done me, as a magistrate, was a per- 
sonal debt of wrong, humanity might prompt me to release it without 
satisfaction rendered ; for that element of debt being personal, I have 
a personal right to surrender it if I choose. So far as I have had a 
personal sense of indignation and resentment excited by the wrong, 
that also it might be generous and right in me to smother, without 
satisfaction, in compassion to the wrong doer. I conceive that a certain 
element of moral defilement has come on him by his evil act, which 
constitutes a reason for punishing. If he amends that moral defile- 
ment by sincere penitence and reform, that obstacle to an unbought 
pardon is also removed. But it is far otherwise with the debt of guilt 
to law, of which I am the guardian. That is not a debt personal to 
me; and therefore I, as lawgiver, may not remit it without satisfaction. 
If I do, I violate my trust as guardian of the laws. Such is their ar- 
guing, and it is just. But it applies to God, as against sinning crea- 
tures, far more than to human lawgivers. And the same reasonings 
which show that the human ruler ought to surmount the first, second, 
and third elements of offence, in order to pardon, do not apply to God. 
The human lawgiver is but a man, and the transgressor is also a man, 
his brother, and nearly his equal in God's eye. In the other case, the 
offended party is infinite, and the offender His puny, absolute property, 
whom God may and ought to dispose of for the sovereign gratification 
of His own admirable and excellent perfections. 

Satisfaction does not compel God.— Again ; it is an utter perver- 



40 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

sion to carry the idea of pecuniary debt so far, in our conceptions of 
guilt, as to conceive of a vicarious atonement as a legal tender. When 
a security comes forward, and offers to pay the whole debt of the poor 
insolvent in jail, with principal and interest, cost and charges ; the 
creditor ?nust accept this legal tender ; if he does not, he cannot claim 
payment afterwards. And the insolvent demands his release as of 
right. Now, guilt is not a mere debt, in this sense. It is a personal 
obligation to penalty ; because the responsibility violated was strictly 
personal ; and strict justice would entitle the ruler to hold the guilty 
party to endure that penalty in himself. Therefore, when the personal 
relation to law is waived by the ruler, and a substitute accepted, there 
is an acs of grace, of mercy. This is the answer to the objection, that 
" if the necessity of the atonement be asserted, God the Father per- 
forms no act of grace, and deserves no thanks for letting the transgres- 
sor go free. He has exacted the last penny, and the release is a mere 
act of jurtice." To our our Surety it is; but not to us. Besides, was 
there no grace in giving us the surety to pay for us? 

The Law requires Satisfaction. — c.) Both the moral and ceremo- 
nial law show that God's justice is essential, and therefore an atone- 
ment necessary. The former is a transcript of His own essential 
perfections: the precepts are of 'necessary and perpetual obligation, 
and in sundry cases, the threatening of penalty is a part thereof, e. g., 
in the 3d Com. The ceremonial law typifies everywhere the necessity 
of satisfaction. Heb. ix; 22. And the evangelical interpretation of 
Heb. x: 4, makes this even clearer; because if God's primitive justice 
might have been waived without any satisfaction, of course it might 
have been, with that of animal blood. This, however impotent to 
atone, did not damage the sinner's case, at least. 

Else God's requirement of us unfair. — The whole of the above 
argument may be put in a very practical light — thus: Is not judicial 
impartiality with God "a matter of principle?" The upright human 
judge, who was entreated by the convicted man, or by his counsel, to 
act as the Socinian expects God to act in pardoning, would be insulted ! 
Now, how does God require us to act, in matters of principle ? He 
literally requires us to die rather than compromit our principles. He 
requires us to meet martyrdom, rathea than yield them. Now, does 
God first command us to seek our complete rectitude in the imitation 
of Himself ', and then act oppositely to His injuction to us 1 Surely 
not. In representing the necessity of satisfaction as so high, as to call 
for the infinite satisfaction of Christ's death in order to make sin par- 
donable, we conform precisely to the system of morals which the 
Scriptures commend to us, for ourselves. The tendency of Calvinism 
is wholesome herein. 

Plainly, Socinianizing theologians will never produce genuine mar- 
tyrs, as history shows. You cannot make men more virtuous then their 
God. If they are taught to believe that He takes liberties with His 
principles, they will infallibly take more. One need never expect 
true, sturdy integrity, where the "New Theology" prevails. The 
father says to his sons : " I shall put my principles in my pocket, when 
I am inclined ; but if you do, I will whip you to death. Such a father 
can rear only sneaks. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 41 

Gentile fears and sacrifices. — d ) Reason and natural conscience 
admit the necessity of satisfaction to divine justice. Witness the 
common consent of mankind in their fears and bloody sacrifices. Says 
Ovid, Timor fecit Deos. I ask, Quis fecit timoremf An intuitive 
apprehension of God as existing, and as just, must have preceded the 
fear. The universal attempt of man to appease God's justice, is man's 
testimony to its necessity. Whence is conscience, if not from God 1 

Argument from Natural Conscience. — Human conscience has 
ever recognized the principle that natural evil is the penal consequence 
of moral evil. So, Rom. v: 12, vi : 23, &c. God's providence is spe- 
cial and almighty ; whence we conclude that wherever there is suffering 
under it, there is guilt. Suffering is the fair equivalent of guilt, as 
happiness is of good-desert. Now, the Socinian's conception of God's 
justice is, that penal inflictions and rewards are merely a politic means 
of repression for sin, and encouragement for holiness. Not so the 
Bible and conscience. In addition to those reasons, God rewards or 
puuishes, because there is an intrinsic merit of reward in the good, 
and of suffering in the bad conduct, so that, abstract justice forbids 
their final severance. For, if God's rewarding and punishing is only a 
policy, His benevolence can never be cleared consistently with His 
omnipotence. Why did He not repress sin in some more efficient and 
benevolent way? He had all power. He must have foreknown that 
this plan would secure only partial well-being to creation. On this 
scheme of ethicks, so called, eternal future punishments could never 
be justified, consistently with God's omniscience and omnipotence. For 
there the reformatory policy is wholly deserted. Hence, every Socin- 
ianizing man tends to Universalism. 

Nor, indeed, can any temporary punishment imposed by God, consist 
with His infinite benevolence and infinite knowledge and power. Again ; 
man's natural conscience repels the doctrine, that punishment originates 
in mere policy. For then, if it could be shown that the guilty person 
would be more effectually deterred from sin by punishing some beloved 
relative than by punishing him, it would be more just to punish that 
innocent relative ! Again ; since happiness for good merit is the exact 
correlative of suffering for demerit, if suffering for demerit is mere 
policy, so is the former — i. e., the innocent has no more moral title to 
his impunity than the guilty to his penalty. So that it might be as 
right in God to separate reward from good desert for. policy's sake, as 
to separate punishment from ill-desert — i. e., to pardon without satis- 
faction. How like you this, "Mr. Legality?" See 2 Thes. i; 6 ; Heb. 
ii : 2, et sim. passim. 

Argument from God's rectoral Justice. — e.) Moreover; does not 
God bear moral relations to His creatures, as well as they to Him? 
Pa. cxliv : 17. Surely. As Ruler, and especially, as almighty Ruler, 
with nothing to hinder Him from doing His will, He is bound to His own 
perfections to rule them aright, as truly as they are bound to Him, to 
serve aiught. This being so, retributive justice will be seen to flow as 
a necessity from the holiness and righteousness of God. By these at- 
tributes God necessarily and intrinsically approves and delights in all 
right things. Wrong is the antithesis of right. A moral tertium quid 
is an impossibility: as the mere absence of light is darkness. There is 



42 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

no moral neutrality. Hence, it results, that God must hate the wrong 
by the very reason He approves the right; e. g., if a man feels moral 
complacency at filial affection, will he not, ipso facto, be certain to 
feel repugnance at ingratitude? I see not how God would be holy at 
all, unless His justice is necessary. 

Again ; were it not so, God would be unjust to His innocent crea- 
tures. Sin is injurious; to all but infallible Being, contagious, and 
universally mischievous. God has been pleased to adopt a plan of 
moral sanctions, to protect the universe from sin. Those beings who 
kept their covenant with God, have a right on Him, which He, in in- 
finite condescension, gave them, to be protected efficiently. Hence, 
His righteousness must lead Him to inflict penal sanctions with exact- 
ness. For it is well known that uncertainty in this encourages trans- 
gression, confounds moral distinctions, and relaxes government. Should 
God do thus, He would be sacrificing the well-being and rights of those 
who deserved well at His hands, to a weak compassion for those who 
deserved nothing. God's essential justice is the foundation of the 
rights, and order of the universe. Unless its actings are certain and 
regular, we are all at the mercy of an unprincipled Omnipotence. Even 
the damned have no interest in making God's justice uncertain ; be- 
cause it is the only guarantee that they shall not be punished more 
than they deserve. And the wider God's dominions, the greater 
strength have all these arguments, forcible as they are even in the 
narrow domain of the family, school, or State. 

Pardons by magistrates no precedents. — The parellel drawn from 
acts of pardon without atonement, safely and beneficially indulged in 
by human rulers, is deceptive ; because they have not the divine per- 
fections of omnipotence, unchangeableness, and omniscience. It might 
be no dishonour to a human magistrate to modify his purposes ; he 
never professed to be either perfectly wise or immutable. Cases may 
arise of conviction, where the evidence of guilt is uncertain, or the 
criminal intention doubtful. In these cases, (and these alone,) the 
pardoning power may find a wholesome exercise. Such cases have no 
existence in the administration of an omniscient God. Once more ; 
the power and authority of human rulers is limited. They must gov- 
ern as they can, sometimes, not as they would; God can do all things. 

In a word, God's moral government, in its ultimate conclusion, must 
be as absolute and perfect as His own nature. For, being supreme 
and almighty, He is irresponsible save to His own perfections. 1 here- 
fore, if He is a Being of infinite perfections, His government must be 
one of absolutely rig hteous, final results. It will be an exact represen- 
tation of Himself; for He makes it just what He pleases. If there is 
moral defect in the final adjustment, it can only be accounted for by 
defect in God. It must be an absolute result, because the free act of 
an infinite Being. 

f.) The death of Christ argues the necessity of satisfaction. For 
Socinus admits, that He was an innocent Man, God's adopted Son. 
Surely God would not have made Him suffer under imputed guilt, 
(He had none of His own,) unless it had been morally neces-ary. In 
this view, we see that the atonement, instead of obscuring, greatly ex- 



W OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 43 

alts God's love and mercy ; that though He knew the price of pardon 
must be the blood of His own Son, His pity did not fail. 

Argument from Sacrifices- — g.) The necessity of atonement is 
taught in all the Old Testament sacrifices (as the gentile sacrifices are 
the testimony of man's conscience to the same truth.) The Apostle 
Paul, as already intimated, makes a grand induction of the ritual facts 
of the Old Testament, in Heb. ix : 22. "And without shedding of 
blood was no remission/' It is literally true, that the ceremonial law 
remitted no trespass, sin, or uncleanness, without a substitutionary 
animal death. Search and see. The theological principle thus set 
forth is just my thesis ; the necessity of satisfaction in order to pardon. 
Now, there is no idea which is inculcated, in the whole of Revelation, 
so constantly, so early, so carefully. It was the first truth, in the re- 
ligion of redemption, taught to Adam's family. The awful, bloody 
symbol of it was ever present, in all the worship of the Old Testament 
Church. With God's mind, it is ever the first and strongest thought. 
With man's unbelieving mind, it is the last, and least. Indeed, the 
contrast here is amazing; and the stupidity of the human mind in ap- 
prehending this first rudiment, is one of the strongest proofs of its na- 
tural deadness in sin. God's example, in perpetually obtruding on 
sinners, the impressive sacrificial symbol of this truth, should be in- 
structive to pastors. They must constantly urge the necessity of 
satisfaction. 

Tacit admission of adversaries. — h.) Last; it is tacitly implied in 
the admissions of Socinians themselves, that God could not consistently 
pardon without the repentance and reform of the sinner. For this 
gives up the point that, in some sort, a satisfaction to the divine hon- 
our must be excated. But, repentance and reform are not satisfactions. 
Second, we shall prove that repentance is the consequence and result 
of pardon; so that it cannot be its procuring cause. An injured man, 
we admitted, might regard repentance as obviating the third element 
of transgression, the subjective moral turpitude. 'But, in God's case, 
it may not; because God must bestow the repentance, as truly as the 
pardon ; and as a consequence of the pardon. See Acts v : 31 ; Jer. 
xxxi: 18, 19. 

We will close with these general Bible testimonies to the necessity 
of satisfaction : Heb. vii : 27; viii : 3; ix: 7, 12, 22, 23, 28; x: 9, 10, 
26, 27 to 29; ii: 10, 14, 17. 



LECTURE XLL 



SYLLABUS. 
NATURE OP THE ATONEMElfT. 

1. What analogies in the course of nature and providence for an atonement f 
And why is not vicarious punishment more admitted among men ? 

Butler's Analogy, pt. ii, ch. 5. Hill, Bk. iv, ch. 3, § 1. "Watson's Theol. 
Inst., eh. xx, § 8= 



44 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

2. What the usage and meaning of the words rendered "atonement," in the 
Scripture ; and of its kindred terms ? 

Symington on "Necessity of Atonement." Lexicons. Hodge on the 
Atonement, ch. iii. Knapp, § 110. 

3. Give the direct refutation of the Socinian theory of the atonement ; and 
ot that which makes it only a governmental displav. 

Turrettin, Loc. xiv, que. 11. Hill, Bk*. iv, ch. 2, § 1, 2. Hodge r s (Ch.) 
Review of Beman. Dick, Lect. 57. A. A. Hodge on Atonement, ch. 21. 

4. Prove Christ's proper substitution and vicarious sacrifice, a.) From the 
phraseology of Scripture, b.) From His personal innocency. c.) From the im- 
port of Gentile sacrifices, d.) From the import of Levitical sacrifices typical of 
Christ, e.) From the Bible terms describing Christ's death. 

Turrettin, Loc. xiv, que. 11. Hill, Bk. iv, ch. 3, § 2, 3, 5. Dick, Lect. 
57, 58. Hodge on Atonement, chs. 8 to 12. Ridgeley, que. xliv, § 4 and 
5. Watson's Theol. Inst., ch. xx. Knapp, § 111. 

5. On what features do the value and efficacy of Christ's work depend ? 
Symington on Atonement, § 2. Hill, Bk. iv, ch. 3, § 1. 

1. Atonement foreshadowed by course of Providence. — To the 
question: How shall man be just with God, Natural Theology gives 
no certain answer. It seems, if we do not deceive ourselves by at- 
tributing to its light, discovei'ies borrowed really from Revelation, to 
inform us very clearly, that God is just, and man, therefore, condemned. 
Having thus shut us up under wrath, its light deserts us, leaving only 
an uncertain twilight shining towards the gate of mercy and hope. 
When Reason looks into the analogies presented by that " Course of 
Nature," as unbelief calls it, which is in truth the course of Provi- 
dence, she sees that there are certain evils consequent upon certain 
faults — e. g., sickness on intemperance, want on idleness, bodily death 
on reckless imprudence ; but she also sees that there are certain reme- 
dial provisions made in nature, by availing themselves of which men 
may sever the connexion between the fault and the natural penalty. 
This fact would seem to hint that in God's eternal government there 
may be a way of mercy provided. But then the analogical evidence 
is made very faint by this fact ; that these natural reliefs for the na- 
tural evils incurred here by our misconduct, are rather postponements 
than acquittals. After all, inexorable death comes to sinful man, in 
spite of all expedients. 

Intervention usually costs a penalty. — But the most interesting 
fact to be noticed in this feeble analogy is, that these partial releases from 
the natural consequences of our faults, are most often received through 
a mediatorial agency, and that this agency is usually exerted for us by 
our friends at some cost to themselves ; often at the cost of suffering the 
whole or a part of the very evils our faults naturally incurred. A man 
is guilty of intemperance; its natural consequence is sickness and 
death ; and without Mediatorial intervention, this consequence would 
become certain ; for the foolish wretch is too sick to minister to him- 
self. But Providence permits a faithful wife, or parent, or friend, to 
intervene with those remedies and cares which save his life. Now, at 
what cost does this friendly mediator save it? Obviously, at the cost 
of many of the vei*y pains which the sick man had brought upon him- 
self, the confinement, the watching, the loss of time, the anxieties of 
the sick room. Or, a prodigal wastes his substance, and the result is 
want; a result, so far as his means are concerned, inevitable. But his 
friend steps in with his wealth, pays his bebts and relieves his neces- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 4* 

sities. Yet the cost at which he does it is in part the very same in- 
curred by the guilty man's prodigality: decrease of his substance and 
consequent want. We may say, yet more generally, that the larger 
part of all the reliefs which Providence administers to the miseries of 
man's sinful condition, from the cradle to the grave, from the maternal 
love which shields and blesses his* infancy, down to the friendship 
which receives his dying sighs, are administered through others ; and 
that at the cost of sacrifice or effort on their part for him. Here, then, 
we*have a general analogy pointing to a vicarious method of rescuing 
man from his guilt, and to atonement by a Mediator for him. We 
have called the evils adverted to in our illustrations, natural conse- 
quences of our faults; but they are not therefore any the less ordained 
of God, and penal; for what is the course of nature, but God order- 
ing? and does not our natural conscience show that suffering can only 
occur under the almighty providence of a just and good God as the 
■penal consequences of ill-desert] 

The revealed idea of an atonement, cr vicarious arrangement to de- 
liver man from guilt, has been made the butt of rationalistic objections. 
The value of this analogy is to silence these objections, by showing 
that the idea, however mysterious, is not unnatural. 

Subsitution unusual in civil law, for rbasons. — It has been ob- 
jected by rationalists that vicarious atonements are not admitted in 
the penal legislation of just and civilized men; and if introduced, 
would strike our moral judgments as wrong and unreasonable. It may 
be remarked, that among the ancients these arrangements frequently 
appeared, in the cases of hostages, and antifsuchoi. In modern 
legislation they appear at least in the case of suretyships for debt. 
But there are four very good reasons which distinguish between human 
governments and God's. 

Because God is a Sovereign Legislator. — 1st. It is in my view, 
unreasonable and mischievous, to reply to objections against the mor- 
ality of a substitution (Christ's or Adam's) by such a reference to God's 
sovereignty, as should represent it as irresponsible, not only to man's 
imperfect conceptions of rectitude, but to the intrinsic principles 
thereof. What is this but saying that because God is omnipotent owner, 
therefore He may properly be unjust. Does might make right? 

But it is a very different (and proper) thing to say that, while God, 
as Sovereign, regulates His every act by the same general principles of 
rectitude, which He enjoins on His creatures, yet He very justly exer- 
cises a width of discretion, for Himsnlf, in His application of those 
principles, which He does not allow to human magistrates, in delegat- 
ing them a little portion of His power. Deut. xxiv; 16. This is made 
proper by His sovereignty (I may righteously do with my horse, 
what would be cruel in him to whom I had hired him, for a day's or- 
dinary journey — e. g., ride him to extremity, or even to death, to rescue 
the life of my child.) And by God's infinite knowledge and wisdom, judg- 
ing the whole results of a substitution as a creature cannot. Hence, the 
impropriety of vicarious arrangements among men may be compatible 
with their admission between God and man; and yet no contrariety of mo- 
ral principles in the two governments, is involved ; e. g. I delegate to a 
teacher, at a distance, a portion of my parental power over my child. 



46 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

I tell him he is to consider himself, as to this extent, in loco parentis, 
and govern my boy on strictly parental principles ; yet he would be very 
unreasonable if he assumed power to exercise every kind of discretion 
as to him, which I might properly exercise. 

His object in punishing vindicatory. — 2d. When men inflict penal- 
ties less than capital, one object of the infliction is the reform of the offen- 
der ; for which a personal endurance of the pain is necessary. But when 
God inflicts the eternal penalty of sin, He has no intention of reforming 
the sufferer thereby. 

No substitute among men, sui juris. — 3d. In those cases where 
human tribunals punish by the loss of life or liberty, the vicarious . 
arrangement cannot be adopted, because no one can be found who is 
owner of his own life and well-being. Bat he cannot pay away, in 
ransom of another, what he has no right to part with. 

Civil Magistrate cannot sanctify. — 4th. We found that one of 
the elements of offence contracted by wrong-doing was the moral tur- 
pitude ; and that the removal of this by genuine repentance is one of 
the necessary conditions for pardoning the wrong-doer. Now, a vica- 
rious atonement is inapplicable in human governments, because the 
human magistrate would have no means to work genuine repentance in 
the criminal, though an atonement were offered. But without such 
repentance, guilt could not be properly pardoned, by Q-od or man 
however adequate the atonement, as a satisfaction to justice. Now God 
can work and insure genuine repentance in His pardoned criminals, 
through the Holy Ghost. See Acts v: 31. Hence, He can properly 
avail Himself of the principle of vicarious atonement. Even suppos- 
ing a man could be found who had autocracy of his own life, time, and 
social relations, and who was willing to die for a murderer. When 
slain, he could not rise again: he would be a final loss to society, and 
society would gain, in exchange, the life of the murderer, now penitent 
and reformed, (supposing the magistrate, like God, had regenerating 
power over him.) So, all the result would be, that society would lose 
a citizen who always had been good, and gain one who was about to 
become good. The magistrate would not feel himself justified in ad- 
mitting the substitution, for such results, however it might be gene- 
rous in the friend to propose it. 

IV. Definition. — Word Atonement is used often in the Old Testa- 
ment, once in the New, Rom. v: 11. The Hebrew is usualay copher, 
literally, "covering," because that which atones is conceived as cov- 
ering guilt from the eye of justice. The Greek is katallage 

reconciliation, as it and its cognates are elsewhere translated. It is 
plausibly supposed that "atonement" is " at-one-ment," — i. e., recon- 
ciliation. These words, then, are generic, and not specific of the par- 
ticular means of reconciliation, according to etymology. The word 
which I should prefer to use, is one sanctioned by the constant usage 
of the Reformed theologians, Satisfaction. This expresses truly and 
specifically, what Christ did for believers. It points explicitly to the 
divine law and perfections, whose demand for satisfaction constitute the 
great obstacles to pardon. It includes, also, Christ's preceptive, as 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 4-1 

well as His penal compensation for our debt. But the other terms 
applied to our Saviour's work de fine it. That work is called apolu- 
trosis, (ransoming,) and He is called lutron, (ransom price.) 
Again, He is said to be our propitiation, hilasterion exilasmos, 
i. e., that which makes God, before offended, to be propitious. These 
terms applied to Christ's suffering work, justify us in describing His 
atonement, as His vicarious suffering of the penalties due our sins, to 
satisfy God's justice and thus reconcile Him to us. 

III. Socinian Theory stated. — Before proceeding to refute the 
Socinian theory of the atonement, let us briefly re-state it. The suf- 
ferings of Jesus, they suppose, were not penal ; but only natural, such 
as would have been incurred by Adam in Paradise, had he not fallen. 
Yet God permitted and ordained them, 1st. As an example to teach us 
patience, fortitude, and submission. 2d. As an attestation of the hon- 
esty and truth of His teachings concerning the way of life through 
imitation of Him. 3d. To make Him a compassionate Teacher, 
Friend, and Patron to His brethren. 4th. To make way for His resur- 
rection; which was the all-important evidence and warrant to us, that 
eternal life may be hoped for, through repentance and reform. Thus, 
He died, suffered for us — i. e., pro bono nostrum — in a general sense. 
Thus, He is the Saviour and Redeemer of men — i. e., the Agent of 
their salvation in a sense. But He made no penal satisfaction for sin. 

Now, an overwhelming indirect refutation of this Uieory has already 
been given, in our argument for the necessity of a proper vicarious 
atonement. Another will be presented under the succeeding head, 
when we pi'ove that Christ's sufferings were vicarious. But for direct 
refutation, note : 

Theory inconsistent. 1. Because a guiltless sufferer suggests 
an unjust Gtod. — There can be little reasonable encouragement in 
the example of one, who suffered so bitterly without deserving any 
thing. Such a spectacle, instead of shedding light, hope and patience 
on the sorrows of believers, could only deepen the darkness and an- 
guish ; for it could only suggest difficulties concerning the justice and 
benevolence of God, and raise the torturing doubt, " Can any one be 
secure of blessedness, any angel or saint in heaven, or is there any 
justice and benevolence in God, in which I may hope for release from 
present sufferings ; seeing a creature so holy as Jesus suffered thus ? 
He was enabled to triumph over them at last? Yea, but why did God 
make Him suffer at all, when He was entirely innocent? I, who am 
not innocent, may not be thus released after suffering ! 

Martytdom only DEMonsTRATES martyr's sincerety. — 2. To re- 
present His death as of such importance as the attestation of the 
honesty and truthfulness of His teachings, contradicts good sense aud 
Scripture. All that the death of a martyr can prove is, that he sin- 
cerely believes the creed for which He dies. False creeds have had 
their martyrs. The Scriptures no wnere refer to Christ's death as the 
evidence of His truth: but uniformly to His works. See John xiv: 
11, v: 36, x: 25-38, xv: 24, &c. 

Christ's death purchases salvation, not His resurrection. — 3 
The Socinian scheme gives the chief importance to Christ's resurrec- 



48 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

tion, rather than His death, as the means whereby "life and immor- 
tality were brought to light." His death was then rather the necessary 
preliminary step, to make His resurrection possible ; that the latter 
might be, to our faith, the splendid and crowning evidence of a future 
life for us. Did God, then, kill Jesus to have the opportunity of rais- 
ing Him 1 Since a resurrection is but the repairing of a death, it seems 
to me that the whole transaction inspires at least as much terror as 
hope. He ordained the death of Him who deserved to live; so there 
is an instance of severity, if not injustice, fully ofl'setting the instance 
of goodness in raising Him. Again ; the Scriptures do not agree to 
the Socinian view; for they everywhere represent the benefit we derive 
from Christ as chiefly flowing from Christ's death. Heb. ii : 14. His 
resurrection was indeed a glorious attestation ; but it was an attesta- 
tion of the sufficiency of that death, as a satisfaction to law, and an 
adequate purchase of our relief. 

He pre-existent. — Again ; the whole plausibility of the Socinian's 
account of Christ's death and resurrection is ruined by the fact of His 
preexistence. For a mere man to rise again after dying, like Lazarus, 
is an encouraging instance; but the rising again of a Being who pos- 
sessed a previous and glorious life besides that of His humanity, pre- 
sents no analogy to encourage mortal man to hope for a resurrection. 
The answer is too obvious: that the strange anomaly of a resurrection 
in Jesus' case was_ most probably the result of His glorious, pre-exist- 
ent nature. Man has no such nature, and therefore should not expect, 
from such an instance, to imitate Him. As well might a log of wood 
infer that, because a living creature is seen to rise erect when laid on 
its back, therefore logs of wood may hope to rise, when laid on their 
backs. 4. The Socinian scheme utterly fails to account for Christ's 
royal exaltation. We do not allude now to the fact that those regal 
functions (Matt, xxviii : 18, xxv: 81,32; Eph. i: 22) could only be 
fulfilled by proper divinity. On the Socinian scheme, He ought not 
to have any regal functions. He has not earned them. He does not 
need them. Sinners regenerate themselves; and their own repentance 
and reform are their righteousness, so that the tasks of the royal priest, 
interceding and ruling on His throne, are useless and groundless. 

Christ, on this scheme, did not redeem Old Testament saints. 
— 5. Last; on the Socinian theory, Christ could not have been in any 
sense the Mediator or lledeeiner of Old Testament saints. Their sins 
could not have been remitted on the ground of Christ's prospective 
satisfaction for sin ; for, according to Socinians, there was none in 
prospect. Those saints could not have profitted by Christ's example, 
teachings, and resurrection; because they were in heaven long before 
Christ existed. But see Heb. ix : 15; Bom i ii : 25; Jno. viii : 56, &c. 

The middle Scheme. — Against the scheme of Dr. Price, called by 
Hill, the Middle Scheme, (see Hill, p. 422,) these objections obviously 
lie : that it represents Christ as acquiring His title to forgive sin only 
by His death. But Matt, ix : 6, says that the Son of Man had power 
on earth to forgive sins before. It speaks splendidly of Christ's suffer- 
ing in order to acquire this title to pardon ; but it gives no intelligible 
account of how these sufferings acquired that title. It is in this, as 
wague as Socinianism. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 49 

Governmental Influence Scheme. — The scheme of atonement 
with which we have now most concern, as defenders of truth, is that 
usually known as the governmental scheme — i. e., that which resolves 
the sufferings and death of Christ into a mere moral expedient of God, 
to connect such a display of His justice and hatred of sin, with His 
acts of pardon, as will prevent bad effects from the failure to punish 
strictly according to law. This view proceeds from that theory of 
ethics which resolves all virtue into benevolence, teaching that an act is 
right or virtuous only because it tends on the whole most to promote 
the welfare of Beings; (and the contrary.) (We cannot pause here to 
debate this theory, but only note how intimately ethics and metaphy- 
sics aftect Theology.) Hence, these divines hold, God has no intrinsic, 
essential justice, other than His benevolence — i. e., that the whole 
amount of His motive for punishing sin is, to preserve His moral em- 
pire from the mischiefs which sin unchecked would produce. Hence, 
the only necessity for an atonement which they recognize, is the neces- 
sity of repairing that defence against disorder in God's government, 
which the dispensing with the penalty would break down. They, con- 
sequently, deny that Christ was properly substituted under the be- 
liever's guilt, that He bore any imputation, that He made a real 
satisfaction to God's justice, and that the justifying virtue of His 
righteousness is imputed to men. The author of this system in New 
England seems to have been the younger Pres. Edwards, son of Jona- 
than, and its great propagator, Dr. Taylor, of New Haven. This is the 
system known as the New School, in the North, and advocated by 
Barnes and Beman on the atonement. It is a striking matter of history, 
that nearly all the arguments by which Edwards, Jr., sought to remove 
the old Calvinistic theory, to substitute his, were unconsciously Socinian. 

Refutation. — If the necessity of satisfaction is proved from God's 
essential justice, as we have attempted, this view of the atonement is 
proved false. Again: if we shall succeed in proving that Christ's was 
a proper, vicarious sacrifice, this, also, overthrows it. Third; wehave 
seen that this New England plan rests on this proposition ; that a gov- 
ernmental policy of repressing sin, is the ouly ground of God's justice ; 
resolving all right into mere utility. The abominable consequences of 
this ethical principle have been shown : they are such that the princi- 
ple cannot be true. We might add that man's intuitive moral judg- 
ments pronounce that sin is wrong, not merely because it tends to injure 
well-being, but wrong in itself; and that the very wording of such a 
statement, implies a standard of wrong and right other than that of 
mere utility. This ethical principle being untrue, the plan falls with it. 

It gives us no righteousness imputed. — But further, for direct 
refutations : This plan of atonement lands us practically on Socinian 
ground as to man's justifying righteousness. If imputation is denied, 
and if Christ wrought out no proper satisfaction to justice for the be- 
liever's sin, to be set over to the believer's account for his justification, 
there is no alternative left; the advocates of this plan are shut up to 
the semi-Pelagian definition of justification, as an imputing of the be- 
liever's own faith (along with the repentance and holy living flowing 
therefrom) as the ground of the sinner's repentance ; as his rightepus- 
ness. Accordingly, Messrs. Barnes, &e.j do explicitly accept this. 



50 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

But we shall show, in the proper place, that such a justification is un- 
scripturah Justification is no longer properly through Christ, saving 
faith would no longer be such a coming to Christ directly, as the Scrip- 
tures describe it ; and the whole tenour of Bible language concerning 
His divine righteousness, concerning His being the immediate object 
of faith, &c, &c , would be violated. 

It is false on its own showing. — Last; the overwhelming objection 
to this plan is, that according to its definition, the sufferings of Christ 
would be no governmental display whatever, of the evils of sin, or of 
God's determination to punish. These divines avow that Christ is a 
Person possessed of a pre-existent, divine, holy, and supreme nature, 
not only guiltless, but above law; and of a pure and sinless humanity, 
the voluntary assumption of which only placed Him, by His own con- 
sent, under law, for a particular atoning purpose. His mediatorial 
person stood forth as the Exemplar of sinless purity and perfection, to 
all creatures, in both its natures; and in every relation; attested by 
holy writ, by the voice of God speaking His divine approval from hea- 
ven in tones of thunder, by the reluctant tribute of His enemies, by 
the haughty Pagan who condemned Him, by the very traitor who be- 
trayed Him, as He appears scathed with the fires of his own remorse, 
before his plunge into hell, and confesses that he had "betrayed the 
innocent blood." All heaven and all earth testified to the Son of Man, 
that He was " holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners;" 
testified to the universe. And yet, the universe is invited to come and 
behold this Being, the only innocent Man who had appeared since 
Adam, delivered to torments more cruel than any of Adam's guilty 
sons had ever endured, "delivered by the determinite counsel " of His 
Father, while without guilt, either personal or imputed ! Is this a 
glorious display of justice ? Does this illustrate the evil of sin, and 
the inexorable connexion which God's benevolence requires Him to 
maintain between sin and punishment? Does it not rather confound 
all moral distinction^ and illustrates the evils of holiness, the cruelty 
and injustice of the Hand that rules the world 1 There is no expla- 
nation of Christ's suffering innocence, which does not involve an insu- 
perable contradiction, except the orthodox; and that, we admit, in- 
volves a great mystery. 

Orthodox view includes all the others. — Each of the false schemes 
attempts to express what 'is true. But ours really includes all that theirs 
claim, while it embraces the vital element which they omit, vicario us pena I 
satisfaction. And note : It is only by predicating the latter, that the moral 
influences claimed by the inadequate schemes really have place. Says the 
Socinian, Christ's suffering work is not vicarious, but only exemplary, 
instructive, and confirmatory. Says the modern " Liberal Christian :" 
it was intended only for that, and to present a spectacle of infinite 
tenderness and mercy, to melt the hearts of transgressors. Says tlie 
New Haven doctor; It was intended for those ends, and also to make 
a dramatic display of God's opposition to sin, and of its evils. But 
we reply; If it was not a vicarious satisfaction for imputed guilt, then 
it was not consistently either of the others. But if it was a vicarious 
satisfaction for guilt, then it also subserves, and admirably subserves, 
all these minor ends. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 5i 

IV. Bible proofs of true theory. — We now proceed to the centre 
of the subjectj to establish what has been several times anticipated — : 
Christ's proper vicarious suffering far imputed quilt. 

1. From various sets of Bible phrases, exceedingly numerous and 
Varied, of which we 1 only present specimens. Thus : 

Christ died for us, (fee. — He is said to have suffered and died "fof 
us," "for the Ungodly." Rom. v: 6, 8; and "for our sins." 1 Pet. 
iiii 18. Peri haMartion. Socinians say- "True; He died in 
a general sense for us, inasmuch ag His death is a part of the agency 
for our rescue ; He did die to do us good, not for Himself only." The 
answer is, that in nearly every case, the context proves it a Vicarious 
dying, for our guilt. Rom. v: " We are justified by His blood." 1 
Pet. iii: 18. " The just for the unjust." (Huper adikon.) Then, 
also, He is said to be a lutron anti pollon. Matt, xx: 28. This 
proposition properly signifies substitution. See Matt, ii : 22 for in- 
stance. 

Christ bore our sins, &c. — Again ■ He is said to bear our sins, and 
equivalent expressions. 1. Pet. ii : 24; Heb. ix; 28; Is. Iiii: 6. 
And these words are abundantly defined in our sense by Old Testament 
usagqir cf.) Num. ix : 13. An evasion is again attempted, by pointing 
to Matt, viii: 17, and saying that there, this bearing of man's sorrows 
was not an enduring of them in His person, but a bearing of them 
away, a removal of them. We reply, the Evangelist refers to Is. Iiii : 
4, not to Iiii : 6. And Peter says : " He bore our sins in His body on 
the tree?'' The language is unique. 

Christ made sin for us. — Another unmistakable class of texts, is. 
those in which He is said to be made sin for us; while we are made 
righteousness in Him. See 1 Cor. i: 30; 2 Cor. v: 21. A still more 
indisputable place is where He is said to be made a curse for us. G-al. 
iii : 13. The orthodox meaning, considering the context, is unavoidable. 

Christ our Ransom. — Again; He is said in many places to be our 
Redeemer — i. e., Ransomer — and His death, or He, is our Ransom. 
Matt, xx: 28; 1 Pet. i: 19 ; 1 Cor. vi : 20. It is vain to reply that 
God is said to redeem His people in many places, when the only mean- 
ing is, that He delivered them ; and that Moses is called the redeemer 
of Israel out of Egypt, who certainly did not do this by a vicarious 
atonement. Christ's death is a proper ransom, because the very price 
is mentioned. 

2. Christ bore imputed guilt because personally innocent. — 
Christ's work is shown to be properly vicarious, from His personal inno- 
cence. This argument has been anticipated. We shall, therefore, only 
tarry to clear it from the Pelagian evasion, and to carry it further. Pela- 
gians, seeing that Christ, an innocent being, must have suffered vicarious 
punishment, if He suffered any punishment, deny that the providential 
evils of life are penal at all ; and assert that they are only natural, so 
that Adam would have borne them in Paradise ; the innocent Christ 
bore them as a natural matter of course. Bat what is the course of 
nature, except the will of God ? Reason says that if God is good and 
just, he will only impose suffering where there is guilt. And this 
is the scriptural account : " death by sin.' 7 



52 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Further. Christ suffered far otherwise than is natural to good men. 
We do uot allude so much to the peculiar severity of that combination 
of poverty, malice, treachery, destitution, slander, reproach and mur- 
der, visited on Christ • but to the sense of spiritual death, the horror, 
the fear, the pressure of God's wrath and desertion, and the satanic 
buffetings let loose against him. (Luke xxii : 53; Matt, xxvi : 38: 
xxvii : 46.) See how manfully Christ approaches His martyrdom ; and 
how sadly He sinks under it when it comes ! Had He borne nothing 
more than natural evil, He would have been inferior to other merely 
human heroes; and instead of recognizing the exclamation of Rousseau 
as just : " Socrates died like a philosopher ; but Jesus Christ as a God," 
we must give the palm of superior fortitude to the Grecian sage. 
Christ's crushing agonies must be accounted for by His bearing the 
wrath of God for the sins of the world. 

3. Christ a Sacrifice. Pagan sense of word. — Another just ar- 
gument for Christ's proper vicarious sacrifice is brought from the ac- 
knowledged belief of the whole Pagan world, at the Christian era 
especially, concerning the meaning and intent of their bloody sacrifices. 
No one doubts that, however mistaken the Pagans are, they have always 
regarded their bloody sacrifices as proper offerings for guilt. Now, we 
use this fact in two ways. First. Here is the great testimony of man's 
universal conscience to the necessity of satisfaction for humao guilt. 
Second. The sacred writers knew that this was what the whole world 
understood by "sacrifice." Why, then, did they call Jesus Christ, in 
so many phrases, a sacrifice ? Did they wish to deceive 1 

4. Jewish Sense. — We find another powerful Bible proof in the 
import of the Levitical sacrifices. This argument is contained in 
two propositions. First. The theological idea designed to be symbolized 
in the Levitical sacrifices, was a substitution of a victim, and the vica- 
rious suffering of it in the room of the offerer, for his guilt. (See 
Levit. xvii: 11: Levit. i: 4, et passim; xvi : 21.) Second. Christ is 
the antitype, of which all these ceremonies were shadows. (See Jno. 
i : 29 ; 1 Cor. xv : 3 ; 2 Cor. v : 21 ; Heb. viii : 3 ; ix : 1 1-14, &c, 
&c) Now, surely the great idea and meaning of the types is not lack- 
ing in the antitype ! Surely the body is not more unsubstantial than 
the shadow ! This important argument may seem elaborated with great 
learning and justice, in the standard works on Theology, as Dick or 
Ridgeley, in works on Atonement, such, especially, as Magee ; and in 
works on the sacred archeology of the Hebrews, such as Dutram, Fair- 
bairn, &c. Hence few words about it. 

V. Conditions of efficacy of Christian Atonement. — The value of 
Christ's work may be said to depend on the following circumstances; 

The infiuite dignity of His person. (See Lect iv.) 

The possession of the nature of His redeemed people. 

His freedom from all prior personal obligation to obey and suffer. 

His authority over His own life, to lay it down as He pleased. 

His voluntariness in undertaking the task. 

His explicit acceptance by the Father as our Priest. 
[These have been already expounded.] 

His union with His people. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 55 

LECTUEE XLII. 



SYLLABUS. 
NATURE OP THE ATONEMENT. (Continued.) 

1. Refute the Socinian and semi-Pelagian objections to the doctrine of vica- 
rious satis action ; viz : 

a.) That to demand satisfaction takes away the grace of salvation and represents 
the Father as vindictive, b.) That the only thanks would then be due to Christ, 
c.) That either Christ's divine nature must have suffered, or else the human must 
have suffered eternally, dj That imputation is immoral, and a legal fiction. 

Turrettin, Loc. xiv, que. xi. (Font. Sol.) Disputations 20, 21, de Sat- 
isfac. Chr. Hodge on Atonement, ch. 20. Dick, Lect. 58. C. Hodge, 
Rev. of Beman. Ridgeley, que. xliv, § v. Watson's Theol. Inst., ch. xx, 
§ iv, v. 

2. What are the design and extent of the Atonement ? State hereupon, a.) 
The Pelagian, b.) The Arminian. c.) The Hypothetic Universalist, or Amy- 
raut; and d.) The strict Calvinist view. 

Turrettin, Loc. xiv, que. 14. Hodge on Atonement, pt. ii. Hill, Bk. iv, 
ch. 6. Dick, Appendix, Ch. Hodge on Beman, End. Whitby, V. Points, 
Watson Theo. Inst., ch. xxv to xxviii. 

I. Objections. — Objections to our view of vicarious Atonement are 
chiefly of Socinian and Pelagian origin. 1. It is objected that we re- 
present the Father in an odious light, as refusing to remit anything till 
His vindictiveness is satiated, and that to suppose full satisfaction 
made to the penal demands of law, leaves no gr.ice in the remission of 
sin. It is not of grace, but of debt. 

Satisfaction consistent with grace in remission. — The answer 
to the former part of this objection is suggested in the lecture on Ne- 
cessity of Atonement. Add that Christ's atoning work did not dispose 
the Father to be merciful ; but the Father sent Him to make it, because 
He was eternally disposed to be merciful. The objection is Tritheistic. 
There is no mercifulness in the Sod, that was not equally in the Father. 

To the latter part of the objection the answer is plain : Satisfaction to 
Law is not incompatible with gracious remission ; unless the same person 
pays the debt, who receives the grace. Does the Socinian rejoin ■ that 
still, the debt is paid, (we Calvinists say, fully,) and no matter by whom 
paid, it can not be remitted? The answer is three-fold : a.) There is 
grace on the Father's part, because He mercif idly sent His Son 1o make 
the Satisfaction, b.) Satisfaction is not the very thing owed, but some- 
thing else, which the Creditor designs to take in its stead. We do not 
hold the Quid-pro-quo theory of Christ's sufferings. We do not view 
the atoning value of Christ's sacrifice, as a quality, to be divided out 
by pound's weight, like some material commodity. We do not hold 
that there must be an arithmetical relation between the quantity of 
sacrifice, and the number and size of the sins to be satisfied for ; nor 
do we admit that, had the sins of the whole body of elect believers 
been greater, the sufferings of the substitute must also have been in- 
creased; as when the merchant buys more pounds of the commodity, 
he must pay more money for his purchase. The compensation made 
to justice is not commercial, but moral. A piece of money in the hand 



54 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

of a king is worth no more than in the hands of a servant; but the 
penal sufferings of a king are. Ooe king captive would exchange for 
many captive soldiers. Hence, Christ paid, not the very total of suf- 
ferings we owed, but like sufferings, not of infinite amount, but of in- 
finite dignity. The Father's mercy appears in accepting them as a 
substitute, when not identical, c.) In a pecuniary, debt, the claim of 
the Creditor is on the thing owed. The moral personal ill-desert is not 
the thing pursued in the suit. Hence, wheu the thing owed is paid, 
(by no matter who,) the claim is extinguished. In penal obligation 
for moral wrong, the claim is on the person owing; because moral ill- 
desert is personal. Hence, if the penal obligation be paid by a sub- 
stitute, the claim is not distinguished; it is matter of grace with the 
Creditor, whether he will relinquish the debtor's person. 

In fine: The Father's grace on our scheme is infinitely higher than 
on Socinian or semi-Pelagian. According to them : redemption only 
opens the door for the sinner to work out his own salvation. He may 
thank God and Christ somewhat, for being so kind as to open the door: 
and himself more, for doing the work ! But on our scheme, God 
moved a priori by His own infinite mercy, gives us Christ, to reconcile 
vicariously the divine attributes with our pardon ; and gives us in Him, 
a complete justification, new heart, sanctification, perseverance, resur- 
rection, and eternal life. 

2. Father's Grace to be Praised. — The Socinians object, that on 
our scheme, since Christ fully pays the Father, and He remits nothing, 
the redeemed have only Christ to thank. The answer to this is con- 
tained in the preceding. 

3,. Does Christ placate Himself? — It is a favourite objection of 
the Socinians, that if Christ is God, we Calvinists represent Him as 
placating Himself, by His own vicarious offering ; which involves the 
absurdity of supposing Him so angry as to demand penalty, and so mer- 
ciful as to pay it, all in one breath. The answer is; a.) This difficulty 
concerning God's wrath only exists, when we view it anthr t-popathically . 
b.) Such a state of mind, though contradictory in a private person, 
who had nothing but personal considerations to govern him, is not incon- 
sistent in a public Person, who has government interests to reconcile in 
pardoning, c.) It is His humanity which suffers the penal satisfaction, 
His divinity which demands it. d.) The objection is an argument ab 
ignorantia. We do not know all the mystery of the persons in the 
trinity, but have good reason to believe that the Son acts economically 
in the Covenant of Grace, as man's representative, and the Father as 
that of all three persons. 

4. Socinians object, that since an infinite number of sins are to be 
atoned, Christ must have paid an infinite penalty; and therefore you 
mast either make His humanity suffer forever, or else make His proper 
divinity suffer. If the latter alternative is taken, there are two absurd- 
ities . God is impassible. But 2d, if he can suffer at all, one single 
pang of pain was of infinite value (according to Calvinistic principles,) 
and hence all the rest was superfluous cruelty in God. 

How COULD TEMPORAL SUFFERING SATISFY FOR INFINITE GUILT. The 

answers are : First. Infinite guilt demands an infinite punishment, but 

not therefore an everlasting one ; provided the sufferer could suffer an 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 5 5 

infinite oue in a limited time. Christ's sufferings were vast ; and the 
capacity for feeling and enduring conferred on His humanity by the 
united divinity, enabled Him to bear, in one life-time, great wrath. 
Second. Tt is the great doctrine of hypostatical union, according to 
Heb. ix : 14, which grounds the infinite value of Christ's sufferings. 
(See that doctrine, Lect. iv.) As the infinite nature of the God, 
against whom sin is committed, makes it an infinite evil, although the 
act of a finite creature, so the acts of Christ's human nature in suffer- 
ing, have infinite value, because of the dignity of His person. As to 
the latter part of the Socinian objection, the answer is, that one pang, 
or one drop of blood, would not suffice ; because the law demanded a 
penalty of similar kind to that incurred by man; a bodily death, and a 
spiritual death. 

Imputation not unjust. — The 5th, and most radical objection is, 
that imputation is at best a legal fiction; and vicarious punishment 
intrinsically immoral. They say, God has pronounced it so; (Deut. 
xxiv : 16; Ezek. xviii : 4, 20,) and the moral sense of civilized com- 
monwealths, banishing laws about hostages. Antipsuchoi, &g. They 
argue that the immorality of the act is nothing but that of the agent ; 
that desert of punishment is nothing but this intuitive judgment of 
immorality in the agent, when brought into relation with law; and 
therefore when penalty is separated from personal immorality, it loses 
its moral propriety wholly. Hence guilt must be as untransferable as 
immorality. 

God not to be measured here bv men. — To the scriptural argu- 
ments, we answer: God forbids imputation of capital guilt by human 
magistrates ; or on special occasion (Ezek. 18th,) foregoes the exercise 
of it for a time Himself; but that He customarily claims the exercise 
of it in His own government. (See Josh, vii : 15; Matt, xxiii : 35.) 
The differences between God's government and man's, fully explain 
1 his. Human magistrates are themselves under law, in common with 
those they rule; God above law, and His will is law. They short- 
sighted ; He infinitely wise. They cannot find one who is entitled to 
offer his life for his neighbor, it is not his property; God's substitute 
could dispose of His own life. (Jno. X;18.) They if the antipsuchos 
found, could not ensure repentance and reform of released criminal ; 
without which his enlargement is improper; God does. (Acts v: 31. ) 
The human antipsuchos, having sacrificed his life, could never resume 
it, and his loss to the .community would be irreparable; so that the 
transaction would give to society an injurious member, at the expense 
of taking from it a righteous and useful one. But Christ resumes the 
life laid down^ and His useful position in the universe. For such rea- 
sons as these, it may be improper to *ave substitutes for capital guilt 
in man's government; and yet very proper in God's. 

This, of course, implies that it is only made with the free consent 
of the substitute. This Christ gave. 

If the objection be true, then pardon is immoral. — To the ra- 
tional argument I reply : 

a.) It proves too much, viz : that there can be no remission in God's 
government at all. For, when pardon is asserted on the general plan 
of the Socinian and rationalist, the elements of guilt and immorality 



<?6 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

are distinguished and separated, i. e., The guilt is alienated from the 
sinning agent, while the bad character remains his, so far as the par- 
doning act is concerned. Is not his own compunction the same as be- 
fore ? Hence His repentance ; and the human reason apprehends that no 
state of soul is so appropriate to the pardoned man, as one that abounds 
in the heartfelt confessions of his ill desert. But we have proved irre- 
fragably that God's rectoral justice includes the disposition to give 
appropriate penalty to sin, as truly, and in the same way, as His dispo- 
sition to bestow appropriate reward on obedience. The two are correl- 
ative. If the one sort of legal sanction is not righteously separable 
from the personal attribute of the agent, even with his own consent, 
then the other sort (the penal) is not. But when God treats the holy 
Surety as guilty, (not immoral,) He makes the same separation of ele- 
ments, which is made, if He should, (without vicarious satisfaction, as 
the rationalists say He does,) treat the guilty sinner as guiltless (not 
holy) by remitting a penalty of which he continues to confess himself 
personally deserving, (as God knows very well he is.) 

b.) If imputation of guilt (without personally immorality) to Christ 
is unjust, even with His own consent ; then, a fortiori, laying of suffer- 
ings upon Him without even imputed guilt, is still more unjust. This 
for the Socinian. 

c.) Penal consequences transferred by Providence and Society. 
— God, in His providential rule over mankind, often makes this separ- 
ation between the personal bad character, and penal consequences ; for 
the punishments incurred in the course of nature by vice, descend to 
posterity; while so far is He from imputing the personal unworthiness 
always along with the penalty, the patient and holy enduring of it is 
counted by Him an excellent virtue. So, too, the whole law of sym- 
pathy, (Rom. xii; 15; Gal. vi ; 2,) makes the sympathizer suffer the 
penalty along with the sufferer, and yet, so far from treating him as 
personally denied with him, regards it as an excellent virtue. 

d.) Man's own practical judgment habitually makes the separation 
of elements, which the Rationalistic objection declares impossible ; 
and we feel that the separation is right. Thus, when the voluntary 
security relieves the bankrupt debtor, it is only at the cost of what is 
to him a true mulct, (precisely the penalty of the debtor's prodi- 
gality,) and we feel the security is rightly made to pay; but so far is 
this from being due to his personal demerit in the transaction, we feel 
that he is acting generously and nobly. So : we feel that we justly in- 
sist on maintaining certain social disabilities against children, incurred 
by parents' crimes, at the very time we approve the former, as person- 
ally, deserving people. 

Thus, by indirect refutation, we prove that the objection of the 
Rationalist, to imputation, and the analysis on which he founds it, 
cannot be true, whether we are able to specify its error or not. 

e.) Potential and actual Guilt. — But I think we can specify it. 
It is in ignoring the broad distinction, which Divines make, between 
potential and actual guilt — i. e., between the quality of ill-desert, and 
the obligation to punishment. Consider the objector's process, (fairly 
stated above,) and it will be seen that it is this: Because the judgment 
we have of the ill-desert of the bad agent is nothing else than the 



OF LECTURES IN TllEOLOGY. 57 

judgment we had of his badness, viewed in its relation to law, there- 
fore his guilt (obligation to penalty) is as personal and inseparable to 
him, as his quality of badness. This is sophism. The true analysis 
is this. 

The badness of the act is nothing else than the badness of the agent: 
and is his personal quality or attribute. The judgment of ill-desert 
arises immediately therefrom, when his quality is viewed in relation 
to law* True. But what is law? Religion's law is nothing else than 
God's will, which is its source and measure. So that, as our judgment 
of the attribute of badness takes the form of a judgment of ill-desert, 
it passes into a judgment of relation — i. e., between two 'persons, the 
sinner and God. So that even potential guilt is rather a relation than 
an attribute. But when we pass to actual guilt, (which is merely ob- 
ligation to penalty, a moral obligation, as I grant, and not one of force 
only,) this is not the sinner's attribute at all : but purely a relation. 
And although its rise was mediated by the personal attribute of bad- 
ness, expressed in the guilty acts, it is not a relation of that attribute, 
abstracted, to something else, but of his person to the will of God — i. 
e., to God willing. And in this obligation to penalty, this sovereign 
will is obligator. It is God's sovereignty, which, though moral, is abso- 
lute, that imposes it. Now, without teaching that God's will is the 
sole source of moral distinctions, or retracting anything I have said 
against that error, I remark, that far too little weight is attached, in 
the objection, to this great fact, that this obligation to penalty, which 
we denominate guilt, is one imposed by the sovereign and omnipotent 
will of our Maker and Proprietor. Let the mind take in this fact 
properly, and it will appear how rash is the assertion that even He 
may not, without immorality, separate from the person qualified by the 
attribute of badness, this relation to penalty, which His own holy will 
imposes, even though the party to whom the guilt is transferred freely 
assents ; and the divine ends in the transaction are those of beneficence ! 

A\xt to return : It appears that the agent's badness is his attribute, 
his guilt is his relation; and that, a relation to another Person and 
will. The two elements belong to different categories in logic ! But 
did any sound mind ever admit this as a universal and necessary law of 
logic, (which it must be, to make the objection conclusive,) that rela- 
tions are as untransferrible as attributes ; as inseparable from the 
things related ? Is it so in geometry? But it is better to show, in 
analogous cases, that it is not so in metaphysics; e. g., A expresses, 
by acts of beneficence towards me, his quality of benevolence, which 
institutes between us, as persons, the relation of an obligation to grati- 
tude from me to him. A is succeeded by his son; and this obligation, 
in some degree, transfers itself and attaches itself to that son, irre- 
spective of, and in advance of, his exhibiting the quality of benevo- 
lence for me, in his own personal acts. I present another illustration 
which is also an argument, because it presents an exact analogy — the 
obligation to recompense — resting on me by reason of A's benefactions 
to me. I say we have here a true, complete analogy ; because this 
title to recompense from the object of beneficent acts is a fair counter- 
part to the obligation to bear a penalty from the ruler, who is the 
object (or injured party) of the bad act. Now, I ask — e. g.: In 2 Sam, 
xix: 31-38, was it incompetent for Barzillai, the Gileadite, to ask the 



58 SYLLABtTS AND NOTES 

transfer of King David's obligation to recompense to his son Chimhani, 
on the ground of his own loyalty 1 Did not David's conscience recog- 
nize his moral right to make the transfer 1 But it is made irrespective 
of the transfer of Barzillai's attribute of loyalty to his son , which, in- 
deed, was out of the question. Here, then, is the very separation 
which I claim, as made, in the case of imputation, between the sinner's 
personal attribute, (badness,) and his personal relation to G-od's sover- 
eign will, arising upon his badness, (guilt.) 

This discussion is of fundamental importance also, in the doctrines 
of original sin, and justification. 

2. Theories of extent of the Atonement. — The question of the 
extent of the atonement is one of the most difficult in the whole range 
of Calvinistic Theology. That man who should profess to see no force 
in the objections to our views, would only betray the shallowness of his 
mind and knowledge. There are three grades of opinion on this subject. 

1. Semi-Pelagian. Refuted. — The theory of the Semi-Pelagian 
denies any proper imputation of any one's sins to Christ, makes His 
suffering a mere general exhibition of (rod's wrath against sin, having 
no relation to one person's sin in particular : and of course it consist- 
ently makes the atonement perfectly general and indefinite. 

The refutation of this view is found in the facts already argued ; that 
there was a substitution, a vicarious suffering of penalty, and a pur- 
chasing of the gracious gifts for the redeemed which make up the ap- 
plication of redemption. 

2. Arminian. — The Arminian view is, that there was a substitution 
and an imputation ; and that Christ provided a penal satisfaction for 
every individual of the human race, making His sins remissible, provi- 
ded he believes in Christ ; and that He also purchased for every man 
the remission of original sin, and the gift of common grace, which con- 
fers a self-determining power of will, and enables any one to believe 
and repent, provided he chooses to use the free-will thus graciously 
repaired aright ; G-od's purpose of election being conditioned on His 
foresight of how each sinner would improve it. 

The fatal objections to this scheme are, particularly, that it is 
utterly overthrown by unconditional election, which we have proved, 
and that the Scriptures and experience both contradict this common 
grace. But of this, more hereafter. 

3. Amyraut's. — The view of the Hypothetical Universalists was 
professedly Calvinistic, and was doubtless, and is, sincerely held by 
many honest and intelligent Calvinists, (e. g., R. Hall, Bellamy,) al- 
though Turrettin and Dr. Hodge condemn it as no better than Armi- 
nianism in disguise. It presents the divine plan in redemption thus : 
God decreed from eternity, to create the human race, to permit the 
fall ; then in His infinite compassion, to send Christ to atone for every 
human being's sin, (conditioned on his believing) ; but also foreseeing 
that all, in consequence of total depravity and the bondage of their 
will, would inevitably reject this mercy if left to themselves, He se- 
lected out of the whole a definite number of elect, to whom He also 
gave, in His sovereign love, grace to " make them willing in the day of 
His power." The non-elect, never enjoying this persuasive grace, infal- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 59 

libly choose to reject the provided atonement ; and so, as its application 
is suspended on faith, they fail to receive the benefit of it, and perish. 

Kefuted. — This theory, if amended so as to say that God sent His 
Son to provide a vicarious satisfaction for the sin of all whom His 
Providence intended to place under the Gospel offers, would be liable 
to less objection than the others. Yet, one fatal objection lies partic- 
ularly against it, to mention no others. It does not account for the 
elects receiving the graces of effectual calling, which make, according 
to the theory, all the difference, practically, while the non-elect do not 
receive them. This theory is compelled to deny that those graces are 
a part of Christ's purchase for sinners; and to assert that they are the 
direct gift of electing love, not mediated to us by Christ. But see 
Eph. i : 3 ; Titus ii : 14 ; Horn, viii : 32 ; 2 Tim. i : 9. 

4. Strict Calvinistic — The view of the strict Calvinist is as fol- 
lows: God decreed to create the race, to permit the fall, and then, in 
His infinite compassion, He elected out of the fallen an innumerable 
multitude, chosen in Christ, to be delivered from this ruin ; and for 
them Christ was sent, to make full penal satisfaction for their unright- 
eousness, and purchase for them all graces of effectual calling and spir- 
itual life and bodily resurrection, which make up a complete redemp- 
tion by His righteousness and intercession founded thereon. It repre- 
sents the Atonement as limited only by the secret intention of God as 
to its application, and not in its own sufficiency for, or suitability to all. 
Symmetrical theory, but attended with some difficulties. 

Inconclusive Proofs. — In proof of the general correctness of this 
theory of the extent of the Atonement, we should attach but partial 
force to some of the arguments advanced by Symington and others, or 
even by Turrettin. e. g. That Christ says, He died " for His sheep," 
for " His church," for " His friends," &c, is not of itself conclusive. 
The proof of a proposition does not disprove its converse. All the 
force which we could properly attach to this class of passages is the 
probability arising from the frequent and emphatic repetition of this 
affirmative statement as to a definite object. Nor would we attach any 
force to the argument, that if Christ made penal satisfaction for the 
sins of all, justice would forbid any to be punished. To urge this argu- 
ment surrenders virtually the very ground on which the first Socinian 
objection was refuted, and is incompatible with the facts that God chas- 
tises justified believers, and holds elect unbelievers subject to wrath 
till they believe. Christ's satisfaction is not a pecuniary equivalent ; 
but only such a one as enables the Father, consistentently with His 
attributes, to pardon, if in His mercy He sees fit. The whole avails of 
the satisfaction to a given man is suspended on his belief. There 
would be no injustice to the man, if he, remaining an unbeliever, his 
guilt was punished twice over, first in his Saviour, and then in Him. 
See Hodge on Atonement, page 369. 

Real Proofs of Calvinistic Theory. — But the irrefragable grounds 
on which we prove that the redemption is particular are these : 

a.) From Decree. — From the doctrines of unconditional election, 
and the Covenant of Grace. (Argument is one, for Covenant of Grace 
is but one aspect of election.) The Scriptures tell us that those who 
are to be saved in Christ are a number definitely elected and given to 



60 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Him from eternity, to be redeemed by His mediation. How can any- 
thing be plainer from this than that there was a purpose in God's atone- 
ment, as to them, other than that it had as to the rest of mankind ? 
See Scriptures. 

b.) From God's Immutability and Power. — The inimutality of 
God's purposes. (Is. lvi ; 10; 2 Tim. ii : 19.) If God ever intended to 
save any soul in Christ, [and He has a definite intention to save or not 
to save towards every soul], that soul will certainly be saved. Jno. xx : 
27,28; vi : 37-40. Hence, all whom God ever intended to save in 
Christ will be saved. Bat some souls will never be saved ; therefore 
some souls God never intended to be saved by Christ's atonement. 
Strength of this argument can scarcely be overrated. Here it is seen 
that a limit as to the intention of the atonement must be asserted to 
rescue God's power, purpose and wisdom. 

c.) Christ's intercession limited. — The same fact is proved by 
this, that Christ's intercession is limited. (See Jno xvii : 9,20.) We 
know that Christ's intercession is always prevalent. (Rom. viii : 34.) 
If He interceded for all, all would be saved. But all will not be saved. 
Hence there are some for whom He does not plead the merit of His 
atonement. But He is the " same yesterday, to-day and forever." 
Hence there were some for whom, when He made atonement, He did 
not intend to plead it. 

d.) From facts. — Some sinners (i. e., elect,) receive from God gifts 
of conviction, regeneration, faith, persuading and enabling them to em- 
brace Christ, and thus make His atonement effectual to themselves ; 
while other sinners do not. But these graces are a part of the pur- 
chased redemption, and bestowed through Christ. Hence His redemp- 
tion was intended to affect some as it did not others. (See above.) 

e.) Experience proves the same. A large part of the human race 
were already in hell before the atonement was made. Another large 
part never hear of it. But "faith cometh by hearing." (Rom. x) ; 
and faith is the condition of its application. Since their condition is 
determined intentionally by God's providence it could not be His inten- 
tion that the atonement should avail for them equally with those who 
hear and believe. This view is destructive, particularly, of the Armi- 
nian scheme. 

In a word, Christ's work for the elect does not merely put them in a 
solvable state ; but purchases for them a complete and assured salvation. 
To him who knows the depravity and bondage of his own heart, any 
less redemption than this, would bring no comfort. 

But the subject difficult, a.) From universal offer of atone- 
ment. — But the difficulties which beset the subject are great; and 
unless you differ from me, you will feel that the manner in which they 
are dealt with by the current of Calvinistic writers, is unsatisfactory. 
The objections are of two classes: From the universal offer of atone- 
ment through Christ, and from Scripture. The fact that God makes 
this offer literally universal, cannot be doubted, nor must we venture 
to insinuate that He is not sincere therein. (Matt, xxviii ; 19 j Mark 
xvi : 16, 17.) The usual answer given by Calvinists of the rigid school 
to this objection is, that God may sincerely offer this salvation to every 
creature, because, although not designed for all, it is in its nature 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 61 

adapted to, and sufficient for all. Arminians rejoin, that this implies an 
adoption of their conception of the nature of the atonement, as a gen- 
eral satisfaction for human guilt as a mass and whole ; that the pun- 
ishment of gospel-hardened sinners for unbelief (which we admit will 
occur,) would be unjust on our scheme, since by it they would be pun- 
ished for not beliving what would not be true, if they had believed it ; 
and that since, on our scheme the believing of a non-elect sinner is 
not naturally, but only morally impossible, it is a supposable ease for 
argument's sake, and this case supposed, God could not be sincere, un- 
less such a sinner should be saved in Christ, supposing He came. The 
honest mind will feel these objections to be attended with real difficulty. 
Thus, in defining the nature of Christ's vicarious work, Calvinists assert 
a proper substitution and imputation of individuals' sins. On the 
strict view, the sins of the non-elect were never imputed to Christ. 
The fact, then, that an infinite satisfaction was made for imputed guilt, 
does not seem to be a sufficient ground for offering the benefits thereof 
to those whose sins were never imputed. 

b.) From texts teaching a seeming universality. — The other 
class of objections is from the Bible; e. g.: Those which speak of 
Christ as having compassion for, or dyin^ for, "the whole world," "all," 
"all men," "every man," &c. Jno. i: 29. Jno. iii : 16; iv: 42; vi: 
51; 2 Cor. v. 19; 1 Jno. ii : 1, 2; Jno. xii : 32; 1 Cor. xv : 22; 2 
Cor. v ; 14,15; 1 Tim. iv: 10; Heb. ii:9,&c. The usual explanation, 
offered by the strict Calvinists, of these texts is this; that terms seem- 
ingly universal often have to be limited to a universality within cer- 
tain bounds, by the context, as in Matt, iii : 5, that in New Testament 
times, especially when the gospel was receiving its grand extension 
from one little nation to all nations, it is easonable to expect that 
strong affirmatives would be used as to its extent, which yet should be 
strained to mean nothing more than this; that persons of every nation 
in the world were given to Christ. Hence, "the world," "all the 
world," should be taken to mean no more than people of every nation 
in the world, without distinction, &c. There is a certain amount of 
justice in these views; and many of these passages, as 1 Cor. xv ; 22; 
Jtio. i: 29, and xii ; 32, may be adequately explained by them. The 
explanation is also greatly strengthened by this tact, too little pressed 
by Calvinists, that ultimately, the vast majority of the whole mass of 
humanity, including all generations, will be actually redeemed by 
Christ. There is to be a time, blessed be Cod, when literally all the 
then world will be saved by Christ, when the world will be finally, 
completely, and wholly lifted by Christ out of the gulf, and sink no 
more. So that there is a sense, most legitimate, in which Christ is the 
prospective Saviour of the world. 

But there are others of these passages to which, I think, the candid 
mind will admit, this sort of explanation is inapplicable. In Jno. iii ; 
16, make "the world" which Christ loved, to mean "the elect world ;" 
and we reach the absurdity, that some of the elect may not believe, 
and perish. In 2 Cor. v: 15, if we make the all for whom Christ 
died, mean only the all who live unto Him — i. e., the elect — it would 
seem to be implied that of those elect for whom Christ died, only a 
part will live to Christ. In 1 Jno. ii : 2, it will not do to interpret 



62 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

" the whole world " to mean only the elect world s distinguished from 
Jews : because John is not speaking particularly to Jews, and because 
of the strengthening word, whole. 

From texts cautioning against a fall. — The other class of texts 
is those in which it seems to be implied that some for whom Christ 
died, may be damned; e. g., Rom. xiv : 15; Heb.x: 29; 2 Pet. ii:l. 
For a good and consistent explanation of this class, see Sampson on 
Hebrews, x : 29. This discriminating divine there advances the follow- 
ing view : The addressing of hypothetical warnings of apostacy or de- 
struction to believers is wholly compatible with the efficacy of Christ's 
work, and the immutability of God's counsel for them. For that 
counsel is executed in them, by moral and rational means, among 
which the force of truth holds the prime place. And among these 
truths, the fact that if they are not watchful and obedient, professed 
believer's may fall, is most reasonably calculated to produce watchful- 
ness. But naturally speaking, they may fall; for the impossibility of 
destroying the elect is only moral, proceeding from the secret purpose 
of God. See Hodge on Atonement, p. 428, &c. 

Conclusion. — This seems, then, to be the candid conclusion : that 
there is no passage in the Bible which asserts an intention tu apply re- 
demption to any others than the elect, on the part of God and Christ ; 
but that there are passages which imply that Christ died for, and that 
He in some sense pitied, all sinners. But the arguments which we 
adduced on the affirmative side of the question demonstrate that 
Christ's redeeming work was limited in intention to the elect. The 
Arminian dogma that He did the same redeeming work in every respect 
for all, is preposterous and unscriptural. But at the same time, if the 
Calvinistic scheme be strained as high as some are inclined, a certain 
amount of justice will be found against them in the Arminian objec- 
tions. Therefore, In mediis tutissime ibis. The well known Calvinistic 
formula, that " Christ died sufficiently for all, efficaciously, for the Meet," 
must be taken in a sense consistent with all the passages of Scripture 
which are cited above. 

The Difficulty the same as in the Decree, to be resolved in 
the same Way. — The difficulty which besets this solemn subject isjio 
doubt in part insuperable for finite minds. Indeed, it is the same diffi- 
culty which besets the relation of God's election to man's free agency, 
(and not a new one), re-appearing in a new phase ; for the Atonement is 
limited precisely by the decree, and by nothing else. We shall approxi- 
mate a solution as nearly as is perhaps practicable for man, by consid- 
ering the same truths to which we resort in the seeming paradox arising 
from election. There are in the Bible two classes of truths ; those 
which are the practical rule of exertion for man in his own free agency ; 
and those which are the recondite and non-practical explanations of 
God's action towards us ; e. g., in Jno. v ; 40 is the one ; in Jno. vi : 14 
is the other. In Jno. 3 : 36 is one ; in 2 Thess. ii : 13 is the other. 
In Bev. xxii : 17 is one ; in Rom. ix : 16 is the other. These classes of 
truths, when drawn face to face, often seem paradoxical ; but when we 
remember that God's sovereignty is no revealed rule for our action, 
and that our inability to do our duty without sovereign grace arises 
only from our voluntary depravity, we see that there is no real collision. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 63 

In like manner, much as the old distinction between God's revealed 
and secret will has been ridiculed (till many Calvinists have surren- 
dered it) there is a sense in which God pities, by the general benevo- 
lence of His nature, the non-elect, while yet He only forms definite 
purposes of compassion to the elect. See Ps. lxxxi : 13 ; Ezek. xviii: 32; 
Luke xix : 41. In the face of these sweet assertions, it is vain to ask, 
with the Hyper Calvinist or Arminian, " Is God divided and vaccilla- 
ting painfully in His own feelings? Is He not almighty, to do what 
He desires ?'* We cannot find out the Almighty unto perfection. But, 
blessed be His name, we know that those statements are true ; and we 
also know that He surely accomplishes all His explicit purposes of 
mercy. In the case of man we can comprehend how a wise and good 
ruler shall have full power to do an act to which he is truly inclined 
by the sincere compassions of his nature, and yet not do it, and most 
spontaneously conclude not to do it; because he is guided by other 
moral motives. Why not God too 1 There is then a sense in which 
God's general benevolence desires the rescue of every sinner. But 
there is a more definite sense in which His love and pity [being limited 
thereto by wise reasons known fully only to Him] explicitly and effica- 
ciously purpose the rescue only of the elect. Christ's work has alter- 
native purposes. See Jno. iii : 16 to 19. Apply this distinction to the 
purpose of the atonement. It was in one sense an expression of a gen- 
eral benevolence to "the world," "the whole world." In one sense, 
Christ's efficacious purpose was to apply its benefits only to " whosoever 
believe." The tendency of His general benevolence was to save; but 
man's obdurate rebellion and rejection [which, in His secret purpose, 
He never intended to remove by His effectual calling], circumvented 
this merciful purpose as to all but the elect, so that what was meant 
primarily for mercy eventuates in the display of God's righteous judg- 
ment in their deeper ruin. Compare Jno. iii: 17 and 19. 

This precious passage clearly teaches an alternative of objects before 
the Divine Mind ; one of compassion to all, the other of judicial re- 
jection to unbelievers, with sovereign grace to His elect, in which God's 
sincerity in His universal pity ; and God's immutable election of only a 
part, must be held, however mysterious, as both true and compatible. 
• I am thus compelled, by Scripture, to think that Christ's sacrifice 
was a genuine manifestation of divine pity to the whole world ; and 
especially to every sinner who ever enjoys the gospel offer, including 
those whom He foresaw as rejectors, and purposed to leave so. (Matt. 
xxii : 4, 5.) At the same time, His unchangeable purpose of election 
made this as to His elect, a complete and efficaciousjDurchase of re- 
demption. All that obdurate gospel sinners can claim of God's sin- 
cerity, is, that He has truly made a provision for removing all the ob- 
stacles to eternal life, growing out of the demands of tbe Law, excepting 
those which exist in the sinner's depraved will itself. 

Amayraut misrepresents the Decree. Caution to the Ortho- 
dox. — You have seen how the party of Amyraut attempted to fix an 
order for the parts of the decree, making the sovereign purpose to be- 
stow effectual calling on the elect, subsequent to the purpose to make 
satisfaction through Christ for man's guilt. The strict Calvinists, we 
also saw, assigned the reversed order to the two parts. It will' be well 
for you to remember the remarks made by me on the comparison of 



(34 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Supra, and infra 1 apsariani^iti. In God's mind the decree is one 
thought, having no succession of parts. We saw that the proper state- 
ment was: That the Infinite, all-comprehending Mind has respect in 
One part of His purpose, to a state of facts designed to proceed out of 
another part of His purpose ; yet the purpose is one, and coetaneous. 
The statement of the rigid Calvinist is, practically, more correct in its 
animus ; because Christ is sent to purchase for the elect, the complete 
redemption designed for them. Yet it would not be safe to say that 
Christ is sent only in consequence of that election ; for <we know not 
what other purposes His mission was intended to fulfill. 

Christ's satisfaction not commercial. — Now Christ is a true sub- 
stitute. His sufierings were penal and vicarious, and made a true sat- 
isfaction for all those who actually embrace them by faith. But the 
Hyper Calvinist conception seems to be, as though Christ's atonement 
were a web of the garment of righteousness, to be cut into definite 
pieces, and distributed out, so much to each person of the elect; whence, 
of course, it must have a definite aggregate length, and had God seen 
fit to add any to the number of elect, He must have had an additional 
extent of web woven. This is all incorrect. The atonement was 
Christ's indivisible act, and inseparable vicarious merit, infinite in 
moral value, the whole in its unity and completeness, imputed to every 
believing elect man, without numerical division, subtraction or exhaus- 
tion. Had there been but one elect man, his vicarious satisfaction had 
been just what it is in its essential nature. Had God elected all sin- 
ners, there would have been no necessity to make Christ's atoning suf- 
ferings essentially different. Remember, the limitation is precisely in 
the decree, and no where else. Hence, to my mind, the expression, 
"limited atonement," "particular atonement," are not exact. It is 
not the atonement which is limited ; but God's eternal purpose as to its 
effectual application. I believe in limited redemption, and in particular 
redemption. The other phrases are unhappy, because inexact. 

Hyper-Calvinist objections solved. — Now, I am well aware that 
there are strict Calvinists who would urge hot objections to such views; 
from their over love for over refined symmetry of dogma. 

1. They would urge, that if there was any sense whatever, in which 
Christ's sacrifice was related to the non-elect, as an expression of G-od's 
pity towards their penal miseries, they must inevitably be released ; 
because justice would forbid the exacting of the penal debt twice over. 
Ans. This forsakes the old Calvinistic view of atonement, by which 
alone Socinian and Popish cavils can be refuted, as not a legal tender. 
See explanations already given. To my mind, it is not the least incon- 
sistent to represent God as offering to sinners an adequate satisfaction 
actually provided, on terms of faith ; and then, when that faith is con- 
tumaciously refused, holding the guilty man to pay the same debt, 
himself; with the aggravated guilt of having, by his obstinacy, disap- 
pointed, and — so to speak — baulked so glorious a provision, and caused 
it to remain forever suspended. 

2. That if Christ's sacrifice was in any sense an expression of pity- 
to non-elect sinners, it must have purchased for them the gift of effec- 
tual calling; on the principle of the greater's including the less; as 
in Bom. viii : 32. Ans. This is but asserting that God could not pity 



Otf LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 65 

at all, those whom He did not elect. But this a direct contradiction 
of Jno. iii: 16, 17; Ezek. xviii: 32, &c. (See above.) Had He or 
Christ had the purpose to apply redemption to these non-elect, then the 
greater would have included the less ; and the purchase of remission 
would have involved the purchase of effectual calling, &c. But He 
did not. He had only that inscrutable (but real) compassion expressed 
in the above texts. 

3. It would be urged by high Calvinists: cuibono? What does this 
atoning pity, which does not elect, come to ? Wherein is it not a 
mere mockery and nil? Ans. It purchases for non-elect sinners, sus- 
pension of doom and natural mercies, during this life, according to 1 
Tim. iv : 10. Had Adam's fallen race not been placed under a gospel 
arrangement, would not their doom have followed their sin, as Satan's? 
This, then, evinces, beyond a peradventure, a relation of the Media- 
tor's pity and sacrifice to all sinners. Second ; it purchases a sincere 
offer of salvation, which is, in itself, a true and inestimable good ; for 
if sincere, it implies that it is not its own defect, but the sinner's folly, 
which prevents its proving an actual, infinite good. Third ; it was 
God's plan, as to all sinners who perish under the gospel : that all the 
obstacles to their deliverance, external to their own perverse wills 
should be removed. And this in order to evince to the universe His 
divine compassion, the true malignity and obstinacy of sin, and His 
equity in punishing forever. 

III. The atonement, then, gains these ends, as to world of non-elect. 
Besides this, and the actual deliverance of elect, it subserves several 
important ends: 1. Illustrating Divine attributes; 

a.) Love and benevolence. How? 

b.) Truth. How? 

c.) Determination to punish. How? 

d.) Wisdom. 

e.) Justice, even more highly than the punishment of the elect. 



LECTURE XLIII. 



SYLLABUS. 
PXJRG AT OR Y. 

1. What results are produced by the atonement, a.) As to God's glory, and 
b.) As to the world of non-elect ? 

Symington on Atonement, § 4. Hodge on Atonement. Hill, Bk. iv,ch. 6. 

2. Is Christ's satisfaction so complete as to leave no room for the doctrines 
of Penance and Purgatory? State the Romish doctrines, with their arguments, 
a.) from Scripture, and b.) from Reason. Refute them. 

Council ot Trent. Session xxv. Bellarmine Controversia., vol. ii,p. 285, 
&c. Tuirettin, Loc. xiv, que. 12. Calvin's Inst., Bk. iii, ch. 5. Dick, 
Lect. 81. ''Essay on Romanism," xix. Mosheim Com. de™Rebus ante 
Const., vol. ii, p. 38. Neander, Ch. Hist., vol. i, p. 217, &c, ii, p. 675. 

1. Results of Redemption to others. — Before I proceed to that 



66 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

which is to be the chief topic of this lecture, the exclusion of the 
whole doctrine of penance and purgatory by the completeness of Christ's 
satisfaction, let us advert for a moment to the point raised at the close 
of the last lecture. This was concerning the effects on the atonement 
on the glory of God, and creatures other than the elect. 

Angels not redeemed by Christ, but instructed and cheered. — 
The Scriptures tell us that Christ "took not on Him the nature of 
angels." This, with kindred declarations, assures us that He is not 
the Mediator of angels; as they need no express mediation. Yet many 
passages show that they have a certain interest in the work of Christ. 
Examine 1 Pet. i : 12: Eph. i; 10; Col. i : 20 ; Eph. iii : 10; Phil, 
ii : 10; Heb. i: 6. Now, we should greatly err, if, for instance, we 
understood such a passage as Col. i : 20, as teaching that the Messiah 
has "reconciled" any angels to God by suffering penal satisfaction, 
and making intercession for them. For the elect angels never had any 
sins to suffer for ; and we are assured that Satan and his angels will 
never be reconciled to God. What, then, is the concern of the hea- 
venly orders, with Christ's meadiatorial work ? 

God's Condescension seen and felt by Angels. — First, the scrip- 
tures abundantly teach us that this work enhances the declarative glory 
of God. The Mediator is proposed to us aud to all creatures likewise, 
as ' the image of the invisible God,' ' the brightness of His glory and 
the express image of His person.' But Christ's mission and character 
are those of ineffable benevolence, pity, love, and tenderness; as well 
as of purity, devotion, magnanimity, and righteousness. Hence, all 
creatures receive, in His incarnation and work, a revelation of God's 
character peculiarly dear to them ; to the holy, as truly as the unholy. 
The holy angels now know, love, trust, and serve their Jehovah, as they 
would not have done, had they not learned better these lovely perfec- 
tions, in the person and work of Christ. God, in taking on Him the 
nature of one creature, man, has come nearer to all creatures, and 
opened up new channels of communion with them. All the creatures 
had important things in common, a dependent nature, intellect, con- 
science and will, responsibility, and an immortal destiny to win or lose. 
God, in uniting Himself to one nature, has, in a certain sense, united 
Himself to the whole class ; the condscension does not avail man alone, 
but brings God nearer to all orders. Thus, humanity appears to be a 
kind of nexus, or point of contact between God, and all the holy crea- 
tures. And thus, it appears that the extent and grandeur of the bene- 
ficent results of the incarnation are not to be measured by the compai - - 
ative smallness of the earth and man amidst the other parts of creation. 
It appears how it may be most worthy of God, to have selected the 
most insignificant of His rational creatures, as well as the ones who 
were guilty, for this hypostatic union with Himself; because thereby 
the designed condescension to, and unification of all creatures, in hea- 
venly communion and love, would be more complete and glorious. The 
lowest nature best answered the purposes. 

God glorified in all His attributes. — But God not only enhances 
the manifestation of His attributes of benevolence, by the incarnation 
of the Son. All His other moral perfections and His wisdom are 
equally exalted. His justice, impartiality, holiness, and determination 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 6*7 

to punish guilt, appear far more in Christ's penal sufferings, than in 
the damnation of Satan, and of wicked men. For they, being His 
mere creatures, easily replaced by His creative power, insignificant to 
His well being, and personally injurious to His rights and character, it 
was easy and natural to punish them as they deserve. Cavilling spirits 
might say, with a show of plausibility, that resentment alone, rather 
than pure justice and holiness, may have prompted Him to their doom. 
But when the Father proceeds, with equal inflexibility, to exact the 
penalty of His own Son, a being infinitely glorious, united by identity 
of nature and eternal love to the Judge, characterized personally by 
infinite moral loveliness, only the more lovely by this act of splendid 
devotion, and only concerned by voluntary substitution with the guilt 
of sinners ; there is an exhibition of unquestionable and pure justice, 
impossible to be carried further. So the faithfulness of God to His 
covenants is displayed in the most wondrous and exalted degree. When 
God's truth finds such a manifestation in His threats, it appears as the 
equally infallible ground of our trust, in His promises. Now, as these 
qualities are the basis of the hope of the ransomed sinners, so they are 
the source of the trust and confidence of all the heavenly orders. 
Their bliss is not purchased by the Cross ; but it reposes on the divine 
perfections which are displayed on the Cross. 

Unbelievers receive temporal good through Christ. — Non-elect 
sinners also derive great and actual benefits from the vicarious work of 
Christ. The kind and sincere offers of salvation, extended to them in 
Christ, are a real benefit. For it is not any limitation or hindrance 
interposed by God to rebuff them if they would come, which renders 
the invitation futile ; it is only their own obduracy. But it appears 
that all the temporal good which sinners enjoy, is also procured by 
Christ's atonement. We sinned in Adam, and fell with him. Why 
did not the summary doom and punishment of the race follow in that 
case, as in the case of the evil angels 1 No other answer can be found 
than that the mercy of God in Christ postponed the infliction of the 
curse, and bestowed on us the many temporal goods which lead us to- 
wards repentance, in order to give opportunity for the gospel offer. It 
cannot be said that these temporal blessings are no true good, because in 
the case of the reprobate they turn out to the enhancement of wrath, 
being abused. For it is their perversity which abuses them, and per- 
verts them from their benevolent intent. Their becoming elements 
of condemnation is but the fulfilment of an alternative purpose. Thus 
it appears that Christ's substitution procures for non-elect men, these 
temporal blessings. But as they refuse to fulfil that instrumental con- 
dition (sincere penitent faith,) on which God has sovereignly suspended 
the full benefit of atonement, the blessings are, after a time, with- 
drawn, and such sinners meet their own full personal deserts. 

2. Purgatorial ideas common to all false religions. — The gen- 
eral idea of a Purgatory, that is, of temporary penal and purging 
pains beyond the grave, to be followed by eternal blessedness, is the 
common characteristic of all false religions. It seems to be adopted 
in some form, by all minds not corrected by revelation ; by Pythago- 
reans, Platonists, the Jewish Mishnical doctors, (ii Mae. ii : 12 ; Jose- 
phus and Philo,) by the Latins from the Greeks,, (Virgil iEneid 6th, 



68 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Ergo exercentur poenis, veterumque malorum supplicia expendunt,) by 
the Mohammedans, the Brahmins, &c. There are two very strong and 
natural sources for this tendency, first the prompting of our affections 
to follow our dead friends with labours for their benefit, and hope ; 
and second, the obstinate reluctance of a heart at once guilty and in 
love with sin to be shut up between the sharp alternatives of present 
repentance, or final damnation. The idea of a purgatory offers a third 
alternative by which the deceitful heart may for a time solace itself 
in sin. 

How introduced into the early Church. — The idea came early 
into the Christian Church, through two channels; a Jewish, through 
their perversion of the doctrine of Hades, and a Platonic, through 
Origen's restorationism. The extension of a final restoration to all 
the wicked, and even to Satan, was, however, regarded by the bulk of 
the Church as an extravagance of Origen. Thus, we are told, prayers 
for the dead appear in the earliest liturgies, as Basil's, and in the cur- 
rent of the Father's, from the "Apostolic constitutions," so called, 
and the Pseudo Dyonisius, downward. When the priestly conception 
of the Christian ministry was intruded (which may be traced as early 
as A. L\ 200,) the sacrament of the mass began to be regarded as a 
sacrifice, which is evinced by their giving it to infants; and soon the 
idea was borrowed, that it availed for the dead. Thus, says Calvin, 
in his Institutes, the custom of praying for the dead had prevailed 
almost universally in the Latin Church for 1300 years before his time. 
Augustine, even, tolerated it. Aerius, the so-called Heretic, seems to 
have been the only noted disentient in the early ages. But prayers 
for the dead imply that their state is not yet fixed, nor yet perfectly 
blessed, and that it may be amended. The fully developed doctrine 
was embodied in the Romish creed, by the Councils of Florence and 
Lyons, 2nd. 

Doctrine stated, Purgatory the complement of Penance. — The 
student may find a very express and full statement of the Roman doc- 
trine, in the 25th Session of the Council of Trent. To understand it, 
and the distinction of the Reatus poenae, and Beatus Culpae, on which 
it is founded, its development out of the simple usages of the primi- 
tive Church about penitents must be explained. When a Church- 
member had scandalized the Church, especially if it was by idolatry, he 
was required, after his repentance, to undergo a strict penance. This 
was considered as satisfaction made to the wounded credit of the Broth- 
erhood. Out of this simple idea grew the distinction between ■peniten- 
tial, and theological, temporal, and spiritual guilt. The latter, thfty 
suppose, is atoned for by Christ's divine blood. For the former, the 
believer must make atonement himself, partly in the sacrament of 
penance, and self-mortifications, the remainder in purgatory. The two 
classes of punishment are, therefore, complementary to each other: the 
more of one is paid, the less of the other remains to be demanded. 
Venial sins incur only the reatum poenae ; mortal sins carry both forms 
of guilt. Baptism, the Church holds, removes all previous guilt — 
original and actual ; so that were the infant to die immediately after 
its baptism, it would incur neither hell, nor purgatory. All other be- 
lievers, including even the highest clergy, even Popes, except the 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 60 

Christian martyrs, must go to purgatory, for a time longer or shorter, 
to pay the reatum poenae of their sins after baptism. The baptism 
of fire, which the martyr receives is, in his case, a sufficient purgation, 
and substitutes the purgatorial sufferings. 

Bellarmine's arguments. — The arguments of Rome on this subject 
may be found so fully and learnedly stated by Cardinal Bellarmine, 
(Controversia, vol. ii, Bk. i, de Purgatorio, p. 285, &c.,) that nothing 
can be added after him. He ranks his arguments under three heads — 
from Scriptures, from the Fathers, from Reason. 

From Apocrypha and Old Testament. — From the Apocrypha is 
quoted 2 Mac. 12th, which states that Judas Mac. sent to Jerusalem 
12,000 drachmae, to be expended in sacrifices for the dead, and adds 
the sentiment: "Therefore it is holy and wholesome to pray for the 
dead, that they may be loosed from their sins." The answer is ; the 
book is not canonical. The same answer may be made to the citation 
from Tobit iv, which recommends the giving of a sepulchral feast to 
the pious poor, in order that they may pray for the souls of the de- 
parted. From the Scriptures, Malachi iii : 2,3, is also quoted, and 
applied to Christ's second coming instead of His first. At the final 
day, they say, a purgatorial influence will be very briefly exerted by 
the final conflagration, on the souls of those then living. There, they 
claim, the principle of a purgatory is granted. The answer is, that 
the New Testament proves that this and similar passages relate to 
Christ's first coming. ( John i : 23; Luke i : 17; iii- 4, or iii; 16.) 
And the trying fire is the searching and judgment of God's convincing 
Spirit, then peculiarly poured out. To see how hardly bested they are 
for Scriptural proof, you may note how they quote 1 Sam. xxxi ; 13; 
2 Sam. i: 12; iii: 35: Gen. 1: 25: Ps. xxxviii : lxvi : 12; Is. iv: 4; 
ix: 18; Micah vii : 8; Zech. ix; 11. It is only by some preposterous 
application of the Fathers, or mistranslation of the Vulgate, that these 
passages seem to have any reference to purgatory. 

Texts from the Gospels. — From the New Testament are quoted 
the following: Matt, xii : 31, 32, where, it is claimed, there is a plain 
implication, that some sins are forgiven in the other world. But first, 
the assertion of a proposition does not prove its converse. Second, if 
the passage implies that any sins are pardonable after death, it implies 
that they are such as blasphemy against the Father and the Son. But 
Rome herself makes these mortal sins. Third, our Saviour's words are 
simply an amplification of the idea that such sin " hath never forgive- 
ness;" as in fact He expresses it in Mark iii; 12, the parellel passage. 

1 Tim. iii: 10, &c, expounded. — Bellarmine also cites 1 Cor. iii: 10-15, 
saying, " the foundation is Christ, the founders are the apostles, the 
good builders are Catholic clergy, their successors; the 'gold, sil- 
ver, and precious stones,' are true Catholic doctrine; the 'wood, hay, 
and stubble,' are erroneous, but not damnably heretical doctrines; and 
the inference is, that these heedless Catholic teachers shall be punished 
in purgatory for their careless teaching." But if clergymen need a 
purgatory, the principle is established. Others reach the same con- 
clusion more directly. Now, the true exposition of this passage, very 
strangely overlooked by the most of the Protestants, makes the 'gold, 



^o SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

silver, and precious stones,' true converts or genuine Christians united 
to the Church, which Christ has founded; while the 'wood, hay, and 
stubble,' are spurious professors. The proof is in the coherency of 
this sense with the whole passage ; in the context, v. 16, and in Is. xxviii : 
16; 1 Pet. ii: 4-6. Next, "the day" which shall try every man's 
work, what sort it is, is evidently the judgment day. Compare 1 Cor. 
iv . 3. But the judgment day is subsequent to all purgatory, accord- 
ing to Rome herself. The fire which is to try each man's work is figu- 
rative, the divine judgment and Spirit. Compare Heb. xii: 29. And 
to suppose that the fire in v. 15 is purgatorial fire implies a change of 
sense ; for the trial is not by literal fire, as the Romanists make pur- 
gatory to be, but figuratively; "houtos os." 

Other Texts. — From Matt, v: 25-26, it is inferred that the debtor 
may pay divine justice the last farthing, and " come out." This is not 
implied : If the debt is 10,000 talents, and he has nothing to pay, he will 
never come out. See Matt, xviii : 24, 25; Matt, v : 22, is also quoted, as 
implying different degrees of punishment; but if all are sent together 
to an eternal hell, no difference can be made. We reply, this does 
not follow, for all infinites are not equal. Their citations of 1 Cor. xv : 
29, and Phil, ii: 10, need scarcely be argued. 

The opinions of the Fathers we easily set aside by denying the 
Church's infallibility. 

Argument from Venial Sins. — Bellarmine's arguments from rea- 
son are four. First : Some sins are venial, and since they do not de- 
serve infiuite punishment, a just God must punish them temporally. 
The answer is, that the Bible knows no venial sins. Some are, un- 
doubtedly, less guilty than others. But God will know how to apportion 
their just penalties, without a purgatory. 

Argument from nature of Christ's satisfaction, and Chris- 
tians' afflictions. — Second : This acute polemic argues, that the 
satisfaction of Christ does not take off believers all forms of the guilt 
and consequences of sin ; for God chastises all of them by bodily death, 
and by more or less of affliction. Nor is it worth while for the Pro- 
testants to endeavour to evade this by saying that these chastisements 
are merely disciplinary. For they are of the nature of other penal 
evils; they are a part of the curse; they are notoriously the conse- 
quences of sins ; the paternal love of God would never lead Him to use 
such means for promoting the glorification of sinless creatures. And 
that they are actually penal is proved by two cases — that of David, 
2 Sam. xii: 14, where God thus explains David's bereavement of his 
child byBathsheba; and that of the baptized, elect infant, suffering 
and dying in "iufaacy. For there is an heir of redemption; yet it 
suffers the curse ; and the Protestant cannot explain it as merely dis- 
ciplinary, because the infantile sufferer cannot understand, and there- 
fore, cannot profit by its own pangs. And indeed, suggests Bellarmine, 
here is seen the folly of Protestants, in dragging in those texts into 
this question, which, they say, teach that Christ's atonement is an ab- 
solute satisfaction for all guilt, such as Rom. x: 4; viii : 1 ; Ps. ciii : 
12-14; Heb. vii: 25; x: 14. For if those texts be taken in the 
Protestant sense, then they are incompatible with the chastisements 
and deaths of justified persons, which are such stubborn facts. How does 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 71 

the Protestant reconcile them? Why, he has to resort to that defini- 
nition of vicarious satisfaction, which all sound Christians advance; 
(as, for instance, to solve Socinian objections,) that satisfaction is not 
a legal tender, but an optionary moral equivalent for the sinner's own 
punishment. Hence, as the Protestant himself teaches, the offering 
of even an adequate equivalent by Christ does not Compel the Father 
to release the debtor, the condemned sinner, absolutely ; as in pecu- 
niary debts, the offer of the legal tender compels the creditor to accept 
it and release his debtor, or else lose his whole claim forever. The 
Father's sovereign option is still necessary to make the transaction 
valid; He might withhold it if He chose. Hence, Protestants them- 
selves infer, the extent to which, and the terms on which, the vicarious 
satisfaction shall avail for the sinner, depend on the actual option which 
God the Father sees fit to exercise. Therefore, it is all folly tor Pro- 
testants to argue, that because Christ gives us a perfect vicarious right- 
eousness, therefore, God cannot exact from the believing sinner any 
penal debt whatever ; it is not theoretically true ; it is not true in fact. 
How much of the penal debt God remits, and how much He still re- 
quires of the believing sinner, must be a question of revealed testimony 
purely. And farther; Suppose a true believer, dying before he has 
gotten his fair share of penance and chastisements. He cannot go to 
hell; he is justified. Must there not be a purgatory, where his unpaid 
debt of penitential guilt can be paid ? Else, when his case is com- 
pared with that of the aged and ripened saint, who, with fewer venial 
sins, has paid a larger amount of penances and afflictions, there is 
flagrant partiality. 

Refutation. — In refuting this adroit argument, I would expressly 
admit that view of vicarious satisfaction advanced, as the true one. I 
would expressly accept the appeal to the revealed testimony. And 
now, setting aside the apocrypha, and the Fathers, as of no authority, I 
plant myself on this fact : that the Scriptures are absolutely silent, as 
to any penitential guilt remaining after the raetus culpae is removed, 
and as to any purgatorial punishment. Search and see. This is the 
view which decided Luther, against all the prejudices of his education. 
Next, the chastisements of the justified are represented by God as 
only disciplinary, and not punitive. Heb. xii: 6-10. "Whom the 
Lord loveth." * * * '"'But He for our profit." Nor can the case 
of David, or of the dying elect infant, rebut this blessed truth. All 
that is said by Nathan is, that one reason of God in sending the chas- 
tisement of the infant's death was, that its manner of birth had given 
the wicked great occasion to blaspheme. Well: this end of the be- 
reavement is, after all, disciplinary, and not vindicatory ! The case of 
the dying infant, plausible at the first blush, is a complete sophism. 
Its whole plausibility is in the false dogma of baptismal regeneration. 
To make Bellarmine's argument hold, he must be able to say that this 
suffering infant is not only elect, but already justified. This, he sup- 
poses, is effected in baptismal regeneration. Now, we know that this 
is a figment. It is not a baptism previous, which redeems this infant, 
but the blood and Spirit of Christ applied only when lie dies. So 
that during the time of his infantile sufferings, he is yet unjustified, 
is still under wrath, and is suffering for his birth-guilt. 



72 SYLLABUS AND NOTES^ 

Argument from perfect satisfaction of believers at death. — 
Again, I say: let the statement of vicarious satisfaction as not a legal 
tender, be accepted. Let us to the law and the testimony, to learn 
whether God, in His sovereign acceptance of Christ's equivalent right 
eousness, reserved any form of guilt to be exacted of the justified. 
Let it be a question of fact. Now, I argue, that no cleansing sufferings 
can be exacted of believers after death, because God says that they are 
then pure, and have no taint of sin to purge away. See Shorter Cate- 
chism, que. 37. If God teaches that "the souls of believers are at 
their death made perfect in holiness,'' then, according to the Papist's 
own showing, there is no room for purgatorial cleansing. This, then, 
is the cardinal question. See, then, Heb. xii : 23. "To the spirits 
of just men made perfect" — i. e., to the souls of Old Testament saints, 
who, according to Rome, are in the limbus patrum, until Christ's resur- 
section. 1 John iii : 2. We are like Christ when we see Him as He 
is. Eph. v: 27. See also 2 Cor. v: 1-8, and Phil, i : 21-23, com- 
pared with Rev. xxi : 27, or Heb. xii: 14. See also Rev. xiv : 13; 
Is lvii : 1, 2; 2 Kings xxii : 20. And now, I return, and from this 
point of view claim all those precious texts which declare the com- 
pleteness of Christ's justifying righteousness, as applicable. When 
God, after teaching us this fact of perfect sanctification of the believer 
at death, adds that there is no condemnation to the man in Christ, 
(Rom. viii : 1,) that His blood cleanseth from all sin, (1 John i: 7,) 
that " by one offering He hath perfected (them) forever," (Heb. x: 14,) 
that "He will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea, (Micah vii : 
19,) the testimony is applicable, and conclusive. 

Romish argument from popular consent, &c. — Before proceeding, 
however, with this affirmative argument, let us notice Bellarmine's 3d 
and 4th points. One is to argue the principle of a purgatory, as we do 
the existence of God, from the consensus populorum. The answer is, 
that the universal testimony for the existence of a God is given against 
the leanings of a guilty conscience and self-interest ; and is, therefore, 
valuable, because disinterested. But the popularity of a purgatory 
among sinners is no argument in its favour, because the invention is 
prompted by the leanings of a guilty heart. The Romanist's fourth 
argument is, that there certainly is a purgatory, because several Popish 
Ghosts have come thence, and stated the fact! This, of course, is 
unanswerable ! 

Refutation from Bible instances. — In pursuance of the argu- 
ment, I cite the case of the penitent thief, (Luke xxiii : 43,) so well 
argued by Turrettin. I only add, that surely, if there ever was a jus- 
tified believer who needed purgatory, this man just plucked, at his 
dying hour, out of the foulest sins, was the one. The Romish evasion 
is to say, Martyrs are exempted from purgatory. Now, first, the thief 
was no martyr; he did not die for the truth ; but died for a robbery. 
Second, the exemption of martyrs is unreasonable and unscriptural. 
Their dying pangs are often fewer and shorter than of many saints who 
have died in their beds ; and their devotion less meritorious. Here, 
also, we may quote the act of Stephen, who, speaking by immediate 
revelation, commended his soul to Christ in glory. So St. Paul, who, 
according to the Romish doctrine, had every reason at the time of his 
speaking to suppose himself a candidate for purgatory, evideutly 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 73 

believed the opposite ; for he held that being absent from the body was 
to be present with the Lord. 

Next : the whole idea of "satisfaction " to divine justice by tempo- 
rary sufferings is unscriptural. So, the idea that penal sufferings have 
in themselves any sanctifying virtue, is equally unreasonable. 

The soul would contract debt in Purgatory. — Once more: the 
soul in purgatory being, according to the Popish theory, still imper- 
fect, would be still sinning; and thus, new guilt would be accruing, 
while it was paying for the old. It could never get out; purgatory 
would be merged into an endless hell. To avoid this conclusion, which 
Bellarmine expressly admits would otherwise follow, the Papists lay 
it down as a principle, that souls after death can neither merit reward 
nor penalty. The only show of proof for this is the perversion of such 
passages of Scripture as say that, at death, man's probationary state 
ends; as, e. g., Eccles. ix : 10; Jno. ix : 4, &c. But the statement 
that probation ends at death, is better satisfied by our theory, that 
there is no purgatory. Hence, this reasoning is a vicious circle. The 
idea that souls after death cease to merit, is, moreover, absurd and 
unscriptural. Angels can, and did, and do merit while disembodied 
spirits. Responsibility is directly founded on the natural relation of 
Creator and rational creature ; it cannot end, save by the change of the 
creature's nature, or of God's. 

The cunning of Rome is illustrated by this dogma. He may well 
say, "By this craft we have our wealth." It prolongs the hold of 
priestcraft over the guilty fears and hopes of men, which otherwise 
must have terminated at death, indefinitely. Men would not pay 
money to evade a misery which was admitted to be inevitable; the ex- 
penditure would appear useless. The cruelty of priestcraft, in thus 
making traffic of the remorse of immortal souls, and the dearest affec- 
tions of the bereaved for their departed friends, is as impious as 
unfeeling. 

On the other hand, how blessed is the creed of the Bible touching 
the believer's death. With the end of that struggle, all our trials 
end, and our everlasting rest begins. With the grave, and all its hor- 
rid adjuncts, the Christian really has no concern ; for when the sense- 
less body is consigned to its darkness, the soul, the true Ego, the only 
being which fears, and hopes, and rejoices and suffers, has already 
soared away to the bosom of its Redeemer, and the general assembly 
of the glorified. 



LECTURE XLIV. 



SYLLABUS. 

CHRIST'S HUMILIATION AND EXALTATION. 

1. Wherein did Christ's humiliation consist? Did it include a descent into 
hell? 

Shorter Cat., que. 26-28. Turrettin, Loc. xiii, que. 9 and 16. Calvin's 
Inst., bk. ii, ch. 16, § 8-13. Knapp, § 92 and 96. 



U SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

2. Wherein consisteth Christ's exaltation? What ig meant by His session at 
His Father's right hand ? 

Turrettin, que. 19. Dick, Lect. 62. Knapp, § 97, 98, and 99. Ridgeley, 
que. 51 to 54. 

3. What the necessity of Christ's resurrection to His mediatorial work f 
Calv. Inst., Bk. ii, ch. 16, § 13. Jno. xvi. Dick, Lect. 61. Ridgeley, 
que. 52. 

4. What are the grounds, objects, and mode of Christ's priestly intercession? 

Turrettin, Loc. xiv, que. 15. Dick, Lect. 59. 

5. How doth Christ execute the office of a King, as God, or as Theanthropos ? 
Wliat His kingdom ? What the extent of His powers ? 

Conf. of Faith, ch. 25, § 1. Book of Gov., ch. ii. Turrettin, Loc, xiv, 
que. 16. Dick, Lee. 64. Ridgeley, que. 45. Knapp, § 98, 99. 

6. What the duration of Christ's kingdom ? 

Turrettin, Loc. xiv, que. 17. Dick, Lee. 64. Hodge on 1 Cor. xv : 24-28. 

Christ's humiliation. Did He descend into hell? Calvin's 
view. — 1. Wherein did Christ's humiliation consist ? See Catechism, 
que. 27. That Christ should fulfil the work of a Redeemer in both 
estates, was necessary for the purchase and the application of salvation, 
There is seeming Bible authority for the clause of the Creed, (inserted 
later than the body,) which says that "He went into hell." See Ps. 
xvi: 10, as quoted by Peter and Paul. Acts ii : and 13. The Hades 
into which Christ is there said to have gone receives four explanations . 

1. The grave. But it was not the grave into which His "soul" went. 

2. The limbus patrum., the Popish. They quote, also, 1 Pet. iii : 19, 
explain it of the Old Testament saints; and thus explain Matt, xxvii : 
53. But we have shown that there is no limbus patrum. 3. The old 
Lutherans understood Ps. xvi ; 10; 1 Pet. iii : 19, that Christ went 
into the hell of the damned to show them His triumph over death, and 
seal their fate. Thus it was a part of His exaltation. Both this and 
the previous notion are contradicted by Luke xxiii : 43. 4. Protest- 
ants by hades of Ps. xvi : 10, now understand simply the invinsible, 
or spirit world, to which Christ's soul went while disembodied. Calvin 
understands the creed to mean, by Christ's descent into hell, the tor- 
ments of spiritual death, which He suffered in dying, not after. His 
idea is, that the creed meant simply to asseverate, by the words, "de- 
scended into hell," the fact that Christ actually tasted the pangs of 
spiritual death, in addition to bodily, and in this sense endured hell- 
torments for sinners, so far as they can be felt without sin. But Calvin 
expressly says, that the whole of that torment was tasted before the 
Redeemer's soul left the body. For thence it went to rest in the 
bosom of the Father. He even raises and answers this question : If 
this is the meaning of the Creed, why is the descent into hell men- 
tioned after the death and burial ; if the thing which it means really 
occurred before ? The answer is unsatisfactory ; but this at least shows 
that I have not misunderstood Calvin in his peculiar view. And this 
is all the ground which exists, for the charge so often made, by persons 
who professed much more acquaintance with Calvin than they possessed, 
that he held to Christ's actual descent into the world of damned 
spirits ! 

Exaltation. — For Christ's exaltation, see Cat., que. 28; Phil, ii; 
6-11; Is. liii: 10-12: Ps. xxii, &c. In what sense was the exaltation 
of a divine Saviour possible? a.) By removing the veil thrown over 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 75 

His glory by incarnation. b.) By economical reward to Mediatorial 
person, for humiliation. See Phil, ii : 10, &c. c.) By exaltation of 
His human nature. Matt, xvii : 2; Rev. i : 12-16. This exaltation 
now, doubtless, takes place, as to Christ's humanity, in a place, called 
the third heaven, to which He went by literal local motion, from ovr 
earth. Sitting at God's right hand means nothing more than the post 
of honour and power. God has no hand, literally, being immense 
spirit. The Lutheran argument for ubiquity of Christ's humanity, 
drawn hence, is foolish ; for in the sense in which the humanity sits at 
the right hand, that hand is not ubiquitous. It is sophism by conver- 
sion of terms, ©f this exaltation, the Kingship is the more permanent 
feature. 

Resurrection of Christ proved. Its importance. — 3. Christ's 
resurrection is every where spoken of in Scripture as a hinging point of 
the believer's salvation and hope. See Bom. iv : 25; Jno. xiv: 19; 1 
Cor. xv : 14, 17, 20, &c. Acts i: 21, 22, 1 Pet. i: 3,&c. The Apos- 
tles everywhere put it forth as the prime article of their system, and 
main point of their testimony. Whence this importance"? Before we 
answer this question, it may be well to advert to the evidences upon 
which we are assured, that this event, equally cardinal and wonderful, 
really occurred. If you are required to show that the fact is authen- 
tic, you may prove it. 

a.) From Old Testament predictions, such as Ps. xv : 10. This 
event is one of the criteria predicted for the Messiah. Then, if you 
have proved that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, you may claim that 
a resurrection is to be expected for Him. 

b.) Christ expressly predicted His own rise. Matt, xx : 19; John 
x; 18. If He is not a monstrous impostor, which His lovely character 
disproves, we must expect to find it true. 

c.) We have the testimony of many witnesses, who saw Him after 
His rise, of the Eleven, of above 400 brethren, and last of Paul, wit- 
nesses competent, honest, and credible. They knew Christ by sight. 
They had everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by bearing false tes- 
timony here. On this point the convincing arguments of the Christian 
writers are familliar to your reading. 

d.) The miracles wrought in confirmation of the fact prove it. See 
Heb. ii : 4. The Apostles, we read, in the act of invoking God's 
miraculous aid, appealed to it as proof that their testimony was true. 
Now, to suppose that God sanctioned such an appeal, by putting forth 
His own power then, would make Him an accomplice to the deception. 
So, the spiritual effusion of Pentecost, especially, and all the subsequent, 
are proofs ; for they are fruits of His ascension. See Acts ii : 33 ; 
v: 32. 

e.) The change of the Sabbath is a perpetual monumental evidence 
of the resurrection. For 4,000 years it had been observed on the 7th 
day of the week. It is now universally observed on the 1st day by 
Christians. Whence the change'? The Church has constantly asserted 
that it was made to commemorate the rise of its Redeemer from the 
dead. Now a publick monumental observance cannot be propagated 
among men to commemorate an imaginary event. The introduction 
of the observance would inevitably challenge remark, and the impos- 
ture would have been instantly exposed. Americans celebrate the 4th 



76 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

of July. They say it is to commemorate the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence. Who believes that, if that event were mythical, the observance 
could ever have become current? 

Let us now resume and answer the questions. What the importance 
of this cardinal fact, in the doctrine of our redemption? 1. Because 
it was necessary to clear His memory of the charge of religious im- 
posture, under which He died, and to vindicate His character as Grod's 
well-approved Son. See Bom. i ; 4. 2. Because it evinced the ade- 
quacy of His satisfaction for man's guilt. When our Surety comes 
triumphing out of prison, we know our whole debt is settled. 3. It 
was necessary to demonstrate His power, as the Captain of our salva- 
tion, to conquer our most dreaded enemies. Heb. ii ; 14, 15. 4. The 
resurrection was necessary to enable Christ to be our Sanctifier, Advo- 
cate, and King. See Jno. xvi : 7; Bom. viii : 11; 1 Cor. vi: 15; 1 
Thes. iv : 14. 5. The resurrection of Christ is the earnest and proof 
of ours. 1 Cor. xv: 20, 23: Phil iii; 21, &c. 

Christ's intercession. Its ground, &c. When does it end? — 
4. The ground of Christ's intercession is His vicarious righteousness, 
which He pleads before the Father. Is. liii : 12. The mode of His 
intercession is by petition ; e. g., Jno. xvii. Some have supposed that 
this suppliant attitude implies an inferiority incompatible with the 
proper divinity of the Son. To mediate does not imply a certain eco- 
nomical inferiority of attitude ; but no more. Some find in Jno. xvii : 
24. " Father, I will," &c, evidence of a more authoritative interven- 
tion. It is overstrainimg the verb, Thelo. But compare Jno. v: 
6, et passim. Yet it is certain that Christ's petitions have a more au- 
thoritative basis than ours, being urged on the ground of His covenant 
and perfect purchase. 1 Jno. ii : 1 . A more plausible difficulty is 
this: "If all power is given into Christ's hands, (Matt, xxviii : 18; 
Eph. i: 22; Col. ii: 9, 10,) why need He intercede at all? Why not 
do, of Himself, without interceding, all that His people need ?" The 
answer is, that Christ is a royal Priest, (Zech. vi: 13,) not Aaronic, 
but Melchisedekan ; and His intercession is rather a perpetual holding 
up of His own righteousness on behalf of His people, by a perpetual 
pleading, in order that He may, on that ground, have this viceroyal 
power of succouring all their wants. And as a royal Priest, He holds 
up His righteousness to the Father, as a plea for admitting each one of 
the elect into that body, His kingdom, to which the Father has autho- 
rized Him to dispense His fulness. 

Its objects. — The objects of Christ's intercession are the elect 
particularly. See Jno. xvii: 9. Also, His official intercession is 
always prevalent ; if He prayed for all, all would be saved : but all 
are not saved. Hence, His prayer for the pardon of His murderers 
must be supposed as not the intercession of the Theanthropos, but 
the forgiveness of the man Jesus. Or else all His murderers were 
saved. He must have also interceded officially for the Old Testament 
saints, for three reasons. The Theophanies are believed to have been 
interventions of the Son. This implies that He had already sought 
and obtained leave to bless His people. 2d. If they had no interces- 
sor, how could a holy and righteous God give His favour to sinners? 
3d. We have a case; Zech, iii: 1-6. But while Christ's mediation is 



ON LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 11 

limited to the elect, there is a sense in which He intervenes for the 
whole race. Doubtless it is His work for man, which prevented the 
doom from following the fall, as promptly as Satans's, and which pro- 
cures for the world all the instances of God's long-suffering. 

Its duration. — The duration of Christ's intercession seems different 
to different minds. Some suppose that He will plead forever; and 
that His pleading will secure an everlasting suspension of wrath, and 
bestowal of ever renewed graces and gifts. They quote Heb. vii: 25. 
Others suppose that this is only relatively endless, compared with the 
brief ministry of an Aaronic priest; and that having thoroughly recon- 
ciled the whole Church to God, and re-instated them in holiness as well 
as favour, no farther need of His intercession will exist; but God can 
dispense His blessings masked by an advocate, as on the holy angels. 
I lean to the former part. Add ; that His priesthood is spoken of as 
everlasting. Ps. ex; Heb. vii: 3,24. His sacrifice is ended, "once 
for all," if His intercession is not eternal, in what sense does His priest- 
hood continue 1 Further : He seems still to be the Medium, after the 
full glorification of the Church, through which they receive the blessings 
of redemption. Rev. vii: 17, &c. And this is much the most con- 
sistent and pleasing view of the relation of the glorified Church to 
God. 

Christ's Kingdom. — See Cat. question, 26. As eternal Son, the 2d 
person doubtless shares forever, the natural and infinite dominion of 
the Godhead. But this Mediatorial kingdom is conferred and economi- 
cal, exercised not merely in His divine nature, but by Him as The- 
anthropos. The Person receives this exaltation. The extent of His 
kingdom is universal. See texts above, and Phil, ii : 10,11. The 
Church is His immediate domain: its members are His citizens; and 
for their benefit His powers are all wielded. But His power extends 
over all the human race, the angelic ranks, good and bad, and the 
powers of nature. This exaltation, therefore, shows our Saviour as 
clearly divine, for no finite wisdom or powers are at all adequate to its 
task. The nature of this beneign kingdom is very clearly set forth in 
Ps. ii: 45, and ex: 72; in Is. ix, &c, &c, and in the passages above 
quoted. The phrase, "Kingdom of God," of "Heaven," &c, is used 
in the New Testament in somewhat varying senses ; but they all sig- 
nify the different aspects of that one spiritual reign, called " the king- 
dom of Christ." a.) True religion, or the reign of Christ in the heart. 
Luke xii: 81; xvii : 21; Mark x; 15; xiv : 17. b.) The visible 
Church under the new dispensation. Matt, xiii : 40, 41; iv : 17; 
Marki: 15. c.) The perfected Church in glory. Luke xiii : 29; 2 
Pet. i; 11. It is a purely spiritual kingdom, as is proved by our Sa- 
viour's words, (Jno. xviii : 36,) by the nature of its objects; the re- 
demption of souls ; by the nature of its agencies, viz., truth and mercy 
and holiness, (see Ps. xlv : 3,4,) by the conduct of Christ and His 
Apostles while on earth, in paying tribute, living subordinate to mag- 
istrates, &c. This respects its terrestial modes of administration : for 
as to its secret and superhuman modes, they are properly almighty, 
and both physical and spiritual. 

Duration of Christ's Kingdom. Beginning. — 6. Orthodox divines 
are not agreed as to the duration of this kingdom, If we would fix 



78 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the date of its beginning, we must make it, in some respects, co-eval with 
Christ's intercession — i. e.,with the protevangelium proclaimed to man. 
For it is plain, that saints before the incarnation had all the same ne- 
cessities for a divine King to conquer, protect, and rule them, which 
we experience now : and lay under the same obstacles as to receiving 
these blessings from a holy God directly, who was bound by His justice 
and truth to punish and destroy sinners. Again; we have seen in- 
stances, the various theophanies, in which the Son, under the person of 
the Angel of the Covenant, busied Himself for the protection of His 
people. Again, Ps. ii speaks of Christ's kingdom, not only as promised, 
but as having an institution co-eval with the declaration to man of His 
Sonship. See best interpretation of v. 7. But yet the God-man was 
only inducted into His peculiar and delegated viceroyalty, after, and 
as a reward of His sufferings. See Phil. ii. And the " kingdom of 
God " is often spoken of at the time of Christ's coming, as being then 
at hand, or as a thing then coming. We must, therefore, conclude, 
that while the Son was permitted to intercede and rule before His in- 
carnation, on the ground of His work to be rendered to the Father, 
His kingdom received a still more explicit establishment after His 
resurrection. 

Termination? — When we come to consider the other terminus, we 
are met by a still more serious difference of opinion. Some, with 
Turrettin, suppose that the delegated mediatorial kingdom over the 
Church will undergo a change in the mode of its administration at the 
final consummation, its relations to its enemies, as well as the nature 
of its own wants, being greatly modified; but that in other respects it 
will continue: in that the Theanthropos will be the direct medium 
for the saints' guidance and government still ; and this forever and 
ever. The arguments are, that perpetual and everlasting duration are 
promised to it ; e. g., Ps. lxxii : 17; Is. ix: 7; Dan. vii. 14; Dan. ii: 
44. Second. His people will need protection and guidance, just as 
they will teaching and intercession, forever. For their glorification 
will not render them naturally impeccable or infallible. Yea, as we 
have seen, when speaking of Socinianism, they must have this ruling 
and teaching, or some day in futurity they will go astray again. But 
it seems far most natural to suppose that these blessings will still be 
given through Christ their Head, to whom they were spiritually united 
at their conversion. The personal union of the divine and human 
will continue. But for what purpose, if the mediatorial connexion is 
terminated? Moreover, the Revelation seems to decide the question, 
showing us the Lamb, (ch. v: 6,) receiving the homage of the glori- 
fied Church, (ch. vii : 17,) leading and feeding it still, and (ch. xxi : 
22, 23,) acting, after the final consummation, as the light of heaven. 
Third. In Rev. xix : 7, 8, the marriage of the Church to the Lamb is 
spoken of as then consummated, amidst the glories of the final con- 
summation. All that was previous was but the wooing, as it were ; 
and it seems very unnatural to conceive of the peculiar connexion as 
terminating with the marriage. Then it only begins properly. 

1 Cor xv : 24 explained. — Others, as Dick, seem to attach so much 
importance and force to 1 Cor. xv: 24-28, as to suppose that it neces- 
sitates another supposition: that Christ having re-instated the Church 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 79 

in holiness and the favour of God, and subdued all its enemies, there 
will no longer be any necessity for the peculiar mediatorial plan; but 
God will rule directly over saints as over the rest of His holy universe 
before man fell ; and Christ will have no other kingdom than that 
which He naturally holds as of the Godhead. In answer to Turrettin's 
first argument, they would say that the everlasting duration promised 
to Christ's kingdom, is only relative to the evanescent generations of 
men : and means no more than that it shall outlast all generations of 
earth. This, they say, is even indicated in the Ps. lxxii: 17, where 
the "forever" is defined to mean as long as the Sun. But "the sun 
shall be turned into darkness before the great and terrible day of the 
Lord." As to the second argument, it is admitted that the saints in 
heaven will always need teaching and ruling ; but it is supposed 
that they being thoroughly justified and sanctified, God may bestow 
these graces on them directly, as thee lect angels, without a mediato- 
rial intervention. These views appear plausible ; but they come short 
of a full clearing up of the subject. They leave unbroken the force 
of the passages cited from Revelation. The whole tenour of the 
Scripture seem to imply that the peculiar relationship, not only of 
gratitude and affection, but also of spiritual union, formed between 
Christ and His people, is to be everlasting. He is their " alpha and 
their omega.'" His life is the spring and warrant of their life. It is 
their union to Him which ensures the resurrection of their bodies, and 
the eternal life of both body and spirit. See Jno. xiv : 19. The 
change made in the method of God's governing the universe, by means 
of the incarnation, will continue, in some respects to all eternity, as a 
standing monument of Jesus Christ's victory and grace. Nor does 
the passage from 1 Cor. xv : 24, seem insuperable. That a striking 
change will then take place in the method of the mediatorial kingdom, 
cannot be doubted. Perhaps it will consist largely in this, that Christ's 
power over the universe (external to His body, the Church,) will be 
returned to the Godhead. But the restoration of the Church to the 
Father, as an accomplished enterprise, is to be received, not as implying 
a severance of Christ's headship, but as a surrendering of Himself 
along with it, body and head, as an aggregate. Let 1 Cor. iii : 23, be 
compared. 



LECTURE XLV. 



SYLLABUS. 

EFFECTUAL CALLING. 

1. How are we made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ? 
See Confession of Faith, ch. x. Cat., que. 29. 
Whence the necessity of a call to man f 
Dick, Lect. 65. Hill, Bk. 5, ch. 1. 



80 SYLLABUS AND NOT£S 

3. How many calls does God give to man ; and what is the difference between 
common, and effectual calling 1 

Shorter Cat., que. 31. Larger Cat., que. 68. Turrettin, Loc. xv, que. 1 
and 4. Hill, Bk. 5, ch. 1. Dick, Lect. 65. Ridgeley, que. 67, (beginning.) 
Knapp, § 129. 

4. "What is God's design in the " common call " of the non-elect; and how 
may His sincerity therein be cleared ? 

Turrettin Loc. xv, que. 2, § 1-13. Howe's "Works; * Reconcilableness 
of God's prescience, &c, with the wisdom and sincerity of His Counsels," 
&c. Andrew Fuller's Works, "Gospel worthy of all acceptation," pt. iii. 
Arminian and Socinian polemics, passim. 

1. Application of Redemption by Holy Ghost. — "We are made 
p irtakerc o^the redemption purchased by Christ, by the effectual applica- 
tion of it to us by Christ's Holy Ghost." We now come to the great 
branch of Theology — The Application of Redemption — in which the 
kingdom founded by Jesus Christ's humiliation is set up and carried 
on. In this work, His priestly office is only exercised in heaven, by 
His intercession. It is His prophetic and kingly which He exercises 
on earth. And the person of the Trinity now brought into discussion 
is the Holy Ghost, which proceedeth from the Father through the Son. As 
the doctrines of Creation, Providence the Law, chiefly concerned the 
Father, that of atonement and priesthood chiefly concerned the Son, 
so this brings into view chiefly the Holy Ghost. This would, there- 
fore, be the most natural place to bring into view the doctrine of the 
Spirit's personality, nature, and agency ; but as you have already at- 
tended to these, I proceed. 

2. Sin necessitates the Call. — The great necessity for the effec- 
tual calling of man is in his original sin. Were he not by nature 
depraved, and his disposition wholly inclined to ungodliness, the mere 
mention of a plan, by which deliverance from guilt and unholiness 
was assured, would be enough; all would flock to embrace it. But 
such is man's depravity, that a redemption must not only be provided, 
but he must be effectually persuaded to embrace it. Now, as our 
effectual calling is the remedy for our original sin, as is our conception 
of the disease, such will be our conception of the remedy. Hence, in 
fact, all men's theology is determined hereupon, by their views of 
original sin. We, who believe the unconverted will be certainly de- 
termined to ungodliness, by ungodly dispositions, therefore believe in 
an effectual and supernatural call. Jno. iii : 5 and 6. 

3. Call either common or effectual. — Calvinists admit only two 
kinds of call from the gospel to man — the common and the effectual. 
They deny that there is any natural call uttered by the voice of nature 
and Natural Theology ; for the simple reason that whatever information 
it might give of the being and government of God, of His righeous- 
ness, and of His punishments for sin, it holds out no certain warrant 
that He will be merciful to sinners, nor of the terms whereon He can 
be so. Where there is no revealed gospel, there is no gospel call. 
And this is only to say, that Natural Theology is insufficient to sal- 
vation. 

The common call consists of the preached word, addressed to men's 
ears and souls, together with (in most, at least,) the common convinc- 
ing operations of the Holy Ghost. This call is made generally to tne 




OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 81 

whole human race in Scripture, and specifically to each adult to whom 
the gospel comes. The effectual call, we hold, consists of these ele- 
ments, and also of a work of the Holy Ghost, "whereby convincing us 
of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of 
Christ, and renewing our wills, He doth persuade and enable us to 
embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the gospel." Arminians, 
indeed, assert that the call is one, and the same, so far as God's dis- 
pensation towards men is concerned, to all under the gospel; and that 
it only differs by its results in different cases, wbich difference is made 
only by man's free will. This we shall more fully disprove wheu we 
come to show the nature of regeneration; but it may now be disproved 
briefly by these thoughts: a.) That a difference is asserted between the 
nature of God's calls; in Scripture, Matt, xx : 16; Jno. vi: 44,45. 
b.) That the effectual calling is a result of election ; but the event 
proves that all are not elect. See Horn, viii : 28; xi ; 29; viii : 30; 
Acts xiii : 48. c.) If the call only differed in the answer made to it 
by man's free will; 1 Cor. iv : 7, would not remain true; nor, Rom. 
ix: 16. 

4. Designs of God in common call. To gather Elect. — God's 
design in the common call of the unconverted may be said to be three- 
fold. First, it is His appointed and proper means for saving from 
among them, the elect. And He either must have adopted this gene- 
rality in the outward call ; or else he must have adopted one of two 
expedients : He must have actually saved all, or He must have separ- 
ated the non-elect wholly from the participation of the common call. 
Had He adopted the latter plan, surely those who now complain of 
partiality would then have complained far more loudly. Had he adopted 
the former, where would have been His manifestation of His sover- 
eignty ; and where that evidence of regular customary connexion be- 
tween means and ends, conduct and destiny, on which He has seen fit 
to found His government 1 

To express His benevolence. — God's second design in making the 
common call universal, was the exercise of the general holiness, good- 
ness, and compassion of His nature, (which generally regard all His 
creatures,) in dissuading all from sin and self-destruction. God's holi- 
ness, which is universally opposed to sin, makes it proper that He 
shall dissuade from sin, every where, and in all sinners. God's mercy 
and goodness, being made possible towards the human race by their 
being under a gospel dispensation, make it proper that He shall dis- 
suade all from self-destruction. And this general mercy not only 
offers a benefit to sinners generally, but actually confers one — i. e., a 
temporary enjoyment of a dispensation of mercy, and a suspension of 
wrath, with all the accompanying mercies, and the offer itself of sal- 
vation. This offer is itself a benefit: only man's perverseness turns it 
into a curse. Blessed be God, His word assures us that this common 
call is an expression of bona fide compassion for all sinners, elect and 
non-elect, (a compassion who^e efficient outgoing is, however, condi- 
tioned, as to all, on faith and penitence in them.) Ezek. xxxiii : 11; 
Ps. lxxxi: 13 ; 1 Tim. ii : 4. 

To clear Himself. — God's third design in making the common call 
universal is, that wlnn men ruin themselves, as He foresaw they 



82 SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 

would, Sis holiness, goodness, compassion and truth may be entirely 
cleared, in their fate, before heaven and earth. It was a part of His 
eternal plan, to magnify Sis own Goodness, by offering to human sin- 
ners a provision for salvation so complete, as to remove every obstacle 
arising out of His justice and law; so that in their final damnation, all 
the universe may see how lovely God is; and how desperate an evil 
sin is. And this is properly God's highest end. 

Is the common call insinckre? — It has been often charged that, if 
God makes an internal difference in sinners' hearts, between the com- 
mon call and the effectual, His wisdom, or His sincerity, in extending 
that common call to all, is tarnished. 

Scripture orders it. — In reply to this, we assert, First: The 
Scriptures explicitly direct the common call to be extended to all; e. 
g., Mark xvi : 15. They assert that God does efficaciously persuade 
some, and not others, to embrace it: Rom. ix : 16; xi : 7. And they 
also say that God is both wise and sincere in His offers and dealings. 
Ezek. xxxiii; 11; Luke xix : 42; 2 Tim. ii : 19. Now, in any other 
science than theology, when facts are ascertained on valid evidence, 
they are all admitted, whether they can be reconciled or not. I re- 
mark farther: that to deny the doctrine of effectual calling does not 
much relieve the subject; for God's prescience of the actual results of 
His universal call, involve very much the same difficulties as to His 
wisdom and sincerity. 

Cases are indisputable. — Second : The Scriptures show us God 
clearly extending warnings, dissuasions from sin, and offers of mercy* 
to those whom He Himself declares at the time, He intends to permit 
to destroy themselves. See Ex. v: 1, with vii : 3,4; Is. vi . 8-11; 
Ezek. iii : 7 and ] 1 ; Matt, xxiii ; 33-35, with 37. So that clearly, 
the apparent difficulty does not arise from any Calvinistic misstate- 
ment of God's gospel plan. 

Providence involves the same question. — Third: The course o 
God's providence in natural things, is liable to the same difficulty. He 
spares sinners. "He sends His rain on the just and unjust; and caus-' 
eth His sun to rise on the good and evil." See Acts xiv : 17. Now 
Peter (2 Ep. iii: 15) tells us that the "long suffering of our God is 
salvation." If His admitting sinners to the gospel call, whom He yet 
foresees to be bent on their own destruction, is insincere ; and the 
reality of his benefit therein is doubted, because He never efficaciously 
purposed to make them repent, His providential goodness also is no 
true goodness. But what sinner believes this? 

God may compassionate, and yet not save. — Fourth: The truth 
is, there is apprehended no inconsistency whatever, in transactions of 
human governors, which are analogous enough (though God's be in 
other respects infinitely above them) to serve for illustration. Here 
is a magistrate, who truly compassionates a rebel, sincerely offers 
terms of pardon, and sincerely desires that the rebel should accept 
them. Yet this co-exists with a fixed purpose not to sacrifice the ma- 
gesty of law in order to pardon, and also with a secret moral certainty 
in the ruler's mind, arising from his knowledge of the rebel's perverse- 
ness that he is not going to submit. Is he, therefore, insincere in his 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 83 

overtures? Then, Why God in His? It may be said : the magistrate 
has no power to make the rebel willing; God has. I reply; and 
this brings us to the key of the whole position ; while God has a natu- 
ral power to do so, He has not the license of His own infinite wisdom, 
and other perfections, to do so. The Arminian objects, that this view, 
making a difference between God's conditioned will and His own effi- 
cacious, unconditioned will, represents God as imperfect, as limited, 
as desiring to do what He can't do, &c. I reply : it represents His 
actions as limited by His own perfections only. To deny, that God's 
understanding, comprehending the whole concerns of His vast empire 
for all time, should see reasons of which we do not dream, other than 
lack of power, for not persuading certain sinners to accept His calls, 
reasons perfectly controlling to God's wisdom, holiness, and goodness, 
is sheer absurdity, pride run mad. Our highest conception of created 
excellence and wisdom is, that it has its natural powers and propensities 
most completely under the control of a general comprehensive wisdom. 
Why should not this, exalted to perfection, be our conception of God? 
God has no passions. Hence the idea of a struggle, between His gene- 
ral wisdom forbidding, and His mercy desiring, to pardon all, is erro- 
neous. His several perfections are ineffably harmonious. Hence, the 
difficulty of reconciling God's sincerity in the common, with the effec- 
tual call, arises very much from an assumption of our mental vanity, 
That assumption, in plain terms, is this: that because we don't see 
any reason, therefore the infinite understanding of God cannot see 
any sufficient reason, other than the lack of power, why He shall, on 
the whole, conclude that He cannot properly save certain sinners, whom 
His compassion truly prompts Him to save ; it being understood that 
He has full physical power to do so. But a moment's reflection upon 
the many controlling considerations of policy which arise in a little 
human kingdom, shows that this assumption is unutterably improbable. 

Common call always conuitioned. — Fifth ; When we assert this sin- 
cere compassion of God in His common calls to the non-elect, we do not at- 
tribute to Him anything futile, or insincere; because, in the expressions 
of this compassion, He always makes an implied or expressed condi- 
tion : that they shall turn. He does not say any where, that He has 
any desire to see any one saved while continuing a rebel. Nor does 
He say any where, that it is His unconditioned purpose to compel all 
to turn. But He says, He would like to see all saved provided they all 
turned. So that His will in the universal call is not out of joint with 
His prescience. And last : God's invitations and warnings to those 
who He foresees will reject them, are the necessary expressions of His 
perfections. The circumstance that a given sin is foreseen does not rob 
it of its moral character ; and hence should constitute no reason why a 
righteous God shall forbear to prohibit and warn against it. That God 
shall yet permit creatures to commit this sin against His invitations, is 
therefore just the old question about the permission of evil. Npt a 



84 STLLABUS AND NOTES 

LECTUEE XLV1 



SYLLABUS. 
EFFECTUAL CALLING. (Continued.) 

5. Who is the Agent, and what the customary instrument in Effectual Calling? 
Hill, Bk. 5, ch. 1. Dick, Lect. 65. Knapp, § 131. Turrettin, Loc. xv, 
que. 4, § 23, &c. Knapp, § 130, 

6. Prove against Soeinians and semi-Pelagians, that in the effectual call, the 
regeneration is not merely by moral suasion of truth and inducement, but by 
supernatural power of the Holy Ghost. 

Turrettin, Loc. xv, que. 6, and que. 4, especially § 28 to end. Hill, as 
above, and Bk. 4, ch. 8. Dick, Lect. 65. Ridgeley, que. 67, 68. Knapp, 
§132,133. Watson's Theol. Inst., ch. 24. Wood's Dr. James, Old and 
New Theology. 

7. Does the Holy Ghost in regeneration operate only mediately through the 
word, or also immediately ? 

Turrettin, Loc, xv, que. 4, § 23, to end. Alexander's Relig. Experience. 
Dick, Lect. 66. 

5. Agent and Instrument of Regeneration. — The Scriptures 
always speak of the Holy Ghost as the efficacious Agent of effectual 
calling. " Except a man he horn of water and, of the Spirit." Jno. 
iii: 5. "It is the Spirit that quickeneth." vi : 63. See, also, 2 Cor. 
iii: 16; Eph. iv: 30. But this proposition will be supported by the 
whole subsequent argument. It is is also very important that we as- 
sert, against Mystics and Fanatics, the counterpart truth: that His 
customary instrument (in all cases except the redemption of infants 
and idiots) is the Word. If we allow any other standard or instru- 
mentality of regeneration than the Word, there will be no barrier to 
the confounding of every crude impulse of nature and Satan, with 
those of the Holy Ghost. The work of grace is the work of the divine 
Spirit. The Word is also His; and He always works His works in ac- 
cordance with, and through His word, because He is a wise and un- 
changeable Agent. Such is the uniform teaching of Scripture, 
confirmed by experience. Christians are "born again, not of the cor- 
ruptible seed : but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth 
and abideth forever." 1 Pet. l : 23. The Holy Ghost renovates the 
mental vision ; the word of God alone furnishes the luminous medium 
through svhich the renovated vision sees. Here is the only safe middle 
ground between Rationalism on the one hand, and Fanaticism on the 
other. To give up the first truth is to surrender the whole doctrines 
of grace. To forsake the second is to open the floodg.ites to every 
wild delusion. 

6. Pelagian and semi-Pelagian view of Regeneration. — There 
are two grades of Pelagian view, as to the nature and agency of regen- 
eration. Both regard it is only a change of purpose in the sinner's 
mind : whereas Calvinism regards it as a revolution of the moral dis- 
positions which determine the purpose of the mind ; accompanied with 
an enlightening of the understanding in spiritual things. The ancient, 
thorough Pelagian taught, a regeneration produced in the boldest 
sense, by mere moral suasion — i. e., by the mere force of moral in- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 85 

ducements, operating according to the laws of mind. In His mouth, 
converting grace meant nothing more than God's goodness in revealing 
the moral inducements of the Scriptures; in endowing man with rea- 
son and conscience, and in providentially bringing those revealed en- 
couragements into contact with his sane understanding. See History 
of Doctrines. But the New England Pelagian attributes to the Holy 
Ghost some indirect agency in presenting moral truths wifrti increased 
energy to the soul. Still, he denies a proper supernatural agency 
therein ; teaches that the office of the Holy Ghost is only suasive 
through the truth, and not renovating ; and makes His work the same 
generieally, only vastly stronger in decree, with that of the minister 
who holds forth the gospel to His fellow men. It was said, for instance, 
that Dr. Duffield said : " The only reason I cannot convert a sinner with 
gospel truth, like the Holy Ghost, is that I am not as eloquent as 
He is." !* 

Regeneration properly defined. — Now, if we disprove this higher 
theory, the lower is of course disproved along with it. But we prove 
that regeneration is not a mere change of the human purpose, occurring 
in view of motive; but a supernatural renovation of the dispositions 
which determine the moral purpose, and of the understanding in the 
apprehension of moral and spiritual truth; the whole resulting in a 
'permanent and fundamental conversion in the actings of the whole man 
as to sin and holiness — the flesh and God. To such a change the human 
will is utterly inadequate and irrelevant; because the change goes back 
of the will. It is therefore a divine and almighty work of the Father 
and Son through the Holy Ghost, as Their Agent. And this conception 
of regeneration is in strict conformity with that view of the nature of 
the will, which we saw a correct psychology dictate. It distinguishes 
properly, between motive and inducement, the former being subjective, 
the latter objective • the former being the efficient, the latter only the 
occasion of rational volitions. So, our view recognizes the practical 
truth, that the subjective disposition is decisive of all rational voli- 
tions — i. e., that the free agent chooses according to his moral nature, 
because his own moral nature decides how he shall view inducements. 
And we also concur with that practical view, which regards subjective 
character as a permauent and uniform cause, communicating regularly 
its own quality to the series of moral volition. This character is, in 
the sinner, carnal. To make the conduct spiritual, the character must 
be renewed. 

Proved. 1. By man's failures in moral revolutions.- — a.) Our 
view is probably proved hy the fact that, while man shows so much 

*You will, some of you, recall the queer statement of Woods, in his " Old aid 
New Theology," of the geometrical illustration of conversion, given by a fa- 
mous theologian of the semi-Pelagian school. The cross is the centre of attrac- 
tion. The sinner is moving around it in a semi-circle, during the process of 
conversion, under the suasive influence of gospel truth. This finds him, at first, 
proceeding along the downward limb of the curve, directly towards hell. Butthe 
inducement deflects the sinner more and more, until at that point where the 
first quadrant ends, the downward motion is ceased, and an upward tendency is 
about to begin. This point marks the stage of regeneration. As gospel induce- 
ment still continues to draw, the sinner pursues more and more of an upward 
course. This quadrant represents the progress of sanctification, at the end of 
which, the sinner flies off at a tangent to heaven ! 



86 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

efficiency in all his physical exploits, especially where combined power 
is applied, his moral enterprises are so feeble and futile. He can 
bridge mighty floods, navigate the trackless seas, school the elements, 
renovate the surface of the globe ; but how little can he do to amelio- 
rate moral evils by all his plans! Where are all his reformed drunk- 
ards, savages civilized, races elevated, without divine grace? If his 
external wprks of moral renovation are so scanty, we may expect his 
internal to be so. 

By different effects of truth, on same subject. — b.) The dif- 
ferent results of gospel truth on different sinners, and especially on 
the same person at different times, cannot be explained consistently 
with the axiom : " Like causes produce like effects," without supposing 
supernatural grace. The same gospel is preached, and "some believe 
the things which are spoken, and some believe not." It is substantially 
the same carnality in all; yet some are subdued, some resist. Is the 
causation the same 1 But more yet : this gospel is applied, from child- 
hood up, for twenty, fifty years, to a sinner, and fails. Its failure 
emasculates its moral force, by well known laws of habit; and the 
principles of carnality are strengthened in the same way. Yet at length 
the gospel triumphs! Sinner turns! Suppose a strong man attempts 
to uproot a sapling, but lacks strength. Yet when this tree has grown 
strong, and this man is in the decrepitude of age, he agaiu tries the 
exploit, and succeeds! This is something above natural strength. Or 
suppose an attempt to resuscitate a lifeless body with pungent medi- 
cines. While the body becomes colder, more corpselike, the drugs are 
becoming effete by evaporation. But at this improbable time, the dead 
man arises ! This is something above natural agency. Nor can this 
conclusion be evaded by saying that the greater energy, eloquence, or 
skill of the address communicates the sudden efficiency to the truth, 
before futile. For, first, no address can be so favourable in its adjuncts 
as many of those maternal appeals (for instance) which this sinner 
resisted long ago, when his carnality was but partially grown; and, 
second, truths which ought to be in themselves of infinite moment can- 
not be sensibly increased in efficacy, by the incidental advantages of 
oratory or skill. Some higher cause is there. 

By radical nature of depravity. — c.) Let a practical view of 
man's moral state by nature be established. Carnality is an original, 
fundamental disposition in him, proved to be so by its universality in 
all men, under all religions, by its prevalence from each man's infancy. 
See Gen. vi : 5 ; Ps. lviii : 3; Jno. iii; 6. Now, we construct on this 
fact a simple argument from experiencr, viz : that no case was ever 
found, in which moral suasion ever eradicated or revolutionized one of 
the original, fundamental propensities or capacities of the human soul. 
Look and see. Man's carnality ought as much to be written down in 
the list of such, by a correct mental-science, as his sense of meuin and 
tuum, his appetites, his love of applause, his capacity of resentment. 
Now, if a philosophy should tell us of a moral discipline to revolu- 
tionize these, we would laugh at it; e. g., the physician may persuade 
us not to eat token hungry ; if he set about persuading us not to be hun- 
gry, we would think him a fool. All that education does, is to school, 
ourb, conceal, or give new channels to these original propensities. Bui 




OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 87 

regeneration undertakes to revolutionize them ; and is satisfied with 
no less. Ps. li: 6, 10. The regenerate man not only foregoes, but 
hates, the sin which was the former object of his natural moral appe- 
tite, and not only takes, but hungers for, the sanctity which was before 
his bitter medicine. 

By consistent view of the Will. — This is also more than an argu- 
ment of experience. By all sound mental science, man's moral spon- 
taneity, while real, puts itself forth according to a I'iw. That law is 
found in the natural state of his dispositions : i.e., the dispositions 
direct the will. Man's will is free. His soul is (wherever responsi- 
ble) self-determined ; but it is the dispositions which determine the 
will. Now, it is preposterous to expect the will to renovate the origi- 
nal dispositions ; the effect to determine its own cause. Nor can the 
presentation of inducement alone change those dispositions, because 
the influence, which external objects shall have as inducements, is itself 
dependent on the state of the dispositions. For illustration: What 
would be 'thought of an attempt to revolutionize the tastes of the pal- 
ate for the sweet, by presenting the bitter as attractive 1 It is the state 
of that palate by nature which determines the attraction to be in the 
sweet, and only repulsion in the bitter. A direct physiological agent 
must be applied. 

By Scripture figures. — d.) We argue this truth from the tenour 
of Scripture. First: man's natural condition is said to be one of 
blindness, of deadness, of impotency, of bondage, of stony-hearted- 
ness. Kev. iii:17; Eph. ii . 1; Rom. v: 6; Acts viii : 23 ; Ezek. xi: 
19. Now, these are figures; but if there is any accuracy or justice in 
the Bible use of figures, they must be incompatible with the idea that 
light alone causes vision in the blind eye, or truth and inducement 
alone, motion in the dead, bound, helpless soul. Next: the proper 
supernatural character of Regeneration is proved by the Bible ac- 
counts of the work itself. It is a new creation. Ps. li : 10; Eph. ii: 
10. A new birth. Jno. iii : 5; Titus iii: 5. A resurrection from 
death. Eph. ii- 1, 4, 5. A giving of a fleshly in place of a stony 
heart. Ezek. xxxvi : 26. An opening of blind eyes. 2 Cor. iv: 6. 
Here again, the creature cannot create itself, the child beget itself, the 
dead body re-animate itself, the stony heart change itself, the dark- 
ness illuminate itself, at the promptiog of inducements. An external 
and almighty power is requisite. Once more : it is expressly attrib- 
uted to God, io language which utterly precludes the idea that He 
changes the heart only through the force of truth applied to it. See 
Johni: 13; iii: 5; vi : 44, 45; Eph. i: 19, 20; ii; 8; Phil, i : 29; 
ii : 13; Acts xi : 18, &c. Further; Scriptural proof will appear un- 
der the next head, Prov. xvi : 1. 

By consequences of the opposite. — e.) If regeneration were by 
moral suasion, man would be his own saviour in a sense excluded by 
the Scripture ; as in 1 Cor. iv : 7. If it were by moral suasion, of 
course regenerating grace would always be vincible ; and, consequently, 
believers would have no sufficient warrant to pray to God for salvation. 
There would be only a probability at best, that God could save them; 
and to the mind taking an impartial survey of the relative numbers 
who have ever resisted the gospel, that probability would not appear 
strong;. 



88 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Is THE OPERATION OF THE SpIRIT MEDIATE ? Dick's VIEW. 7. There 

is a seuse in which the Holy Ghost is said to operate regeneration only 
mediately, through the truth, which is held not by Pelagians, hut by 
Calvinists. This seems to have been the doctriue originiated in the 
French Presbyterian Church, of the 17th century, by Claude Pajon. 
It may be found stated perspicuously in Dick's 66th Lecture, and even 
partially adopted in Dr.* Alexander's Religious Experience. These 
divines would by no means teach that regeneration is not a divine, 
supernatural and invincible work of grace. But they suppose that 
the essential change is in the illumination of the understanding, which 
God's Spirit indeed almigbtily effects ; but, to effect which, nothing- 
more is needed than to secure for the truth a true spiritual apprehen- 
sion by the understanding. The truth being truly apprehended, they 
suppose the renovation of the will follows as a necessary result, without 
farther supernatural agency; because, according to our Caivinistic psy- 
chology, the soul's emotions are governed by its vieivs of the objects 
thereof; and the will always follows the latest and most decisive con- 
viction of the understanding. They claim the order of phrases in the 
Catechism, question 31. 

Turrettin's. — Now, the justice of this reasoning is admitted ; but 
the mistake is in the failure to go back one step farther in the analysis. 
We hold, on the contrary, that there is in regeneration not only a me- 
diate, but also an immediate operation of the Holy Ghost, not only 
placing before the understanding truly luminous and spiritual views of 
the word and its motives; but immediately revolutionizing the moral 
dispositions, so as to incline them to love those views. We believe 
that in order for the actings of regenerate nature to take place, there 
must be both the object adapted to the spiritual mind — i. e., the truth; 
and also the spiritual subjective adaptation and capacity to embrace 
that truth. And this : 

Arguments. a.) Power of spirit precedes. — a.) Because the 
Scriptures often speak of a spiritual power precedaneous to the truth 
on the operation of which power, the saving apprehension of truth is 
conditioned. See Ps. cxix : 18. The opening is the precedent cause; 
the beholding of wonderful things out of the law, the consequence. 
As the eye closed by cataract cannot be restored to vision by any pour- 
ing of beams of light on it, however pure and condensed, so the soul 
does not acquire spiritual vision by bringing the truth alone in any 
degree of spiritual contact. The surgeon's knife goes before, removing 
the obstruction: then, on the presentation of light, vision results. 
Both must concur. Let the student examine, in the same way, Luke 
xxiv: 45; Eph. i: 17, 18; Acts xvi : 14; 1 ('or. iii : 0,7,9; Jer. 
xxxi : 33. 

The carnal mind only hates, the more clearlv the light is 
seen. — b.) The Scriptures represent man's mind as hostile, by reason 
of depravity, to the pure truth of God. 1 Cor. i; 23: ii : 14; Bom. 
viii; 7, &c. It is not because God's truth is misapprehended by the 
sinner's mind, that he repels it; he is intrinsically opposed to it. The 
more closely and clearlv it is brought home to him, the more does his 
opposition revive. See Rom. vii : 7, 8, 9. It is hard to see, therefore, 
how this instinctive hostility could be reconciled, by giving the sinner 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 89 

clearer understanding of that spiritual truth, whose little glimpses 
even fill him with enemity and rebellion. Objective inducement can- 
not modify the subjective state of the moral capacities to which it is 
addressed, because the adaptation of the external object to be a motive 
at all, is determined a priori by those subjective states. These writers, 
therefore, "put the cart before the horse," in the same way with the Pe- 
algian, (not indeed intending a Pelagian result.) When pressed with 
this, they say : the several faculties of the soul are not different parts 
or members thereof, but only different modes in which the same unit, 
soul, acts. True: but their, theory discriminates between the soul's 
capacity of understanding, and its capacity of feeling thereupon, just 
as ours does. The plea is a mere subterfuge. 

Comparison with infant regeneration. — c.) Infants and idiots 
are, we believe, regenerated. They cannot be regenerated mediately 
through the truth ; for their understandings, being undeveloped, are 
incapable of the application of means. The operation of the Holy 
Ghost must be, therefore, immediate. But the disease of original sin, 
constituting the necessity for regeneration, is in them^generically the 
same as in us ; the state of sanctification initiated is generically the 
same as in us; and, therefore, the process must be substantially the 
same. Here is a probable argument that its means are applied in the 
same way. 

The mind judges of moral objects as the heart feels. — d.) Last : 
a proper analysis of the mods in which intellections or mental convic- 
tions arise on moral subjects, will prove our theory, and remove all 
the plausibility in the argument for the opposite. True; emotion 
follows mental apprehension ; and the last dictate of the understand- 
ing governs the will. But how does the mind attain its apprehensions 
of objects of moral volition? Only in consequence of its moral dispo- 
sitions. Saith the acute Paschal: (Pensees) "In natural things the 
views of the understanding determine the feelings ; but in spiritual 
things, the feelings determine the views of the understanding;" e. g., 
the belief that sweetmeats are desirable may be in the child, when 
distinguished from the appetency following thereupon, as properly an 
intellectual state, as the belief that two and three make five. But, that 
belief about the sweetmeats is none the less, itself a consequence — i. 
e., of an appetite, of a state of taste in the palate. So, the belief of 
the understanding as to the desirableness of holiness for me, &c, is an 
intellectual state, distinguishable from the appetency for holiness con- 
sequent thereon as an emotion ; but it is itself dictated by the moral 
state of the dispositions. A certain moral taste in the will must exist 
as to sin and holiness, before the understanding apprehends holiness as 
desirable for me. The opinion of the head, on all moral and spiritual 
choice, is but the echo of the spontaneous verdict pronounced before- 
hand by the heart. Now, it may be all true, that when a spiritual 
apprehension of Christ and holiness, as desirable for me, is secured in 
the head, the emotions and volitions of the heart will all come right 
as a natural consequence. But how is that spiritual apprehension in 
the understanding to be secured 1 Only by a revolution of the moral 
dispositions. The immediate operation of the Holy G-host must pre- 
cede the mediate of the word ; not indeed in time, but in causative 






90 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

influence. SeeEph.iv: 18; Luke viii : 15; Rom. x : 10. Distinguish 
here between conscience and appetency. Depravity consists in perversion 
of latter. 

Carnal blindness thus successfully explained. — e.) Add, that 
this view gives us a consistent rationale of that impotency of the carnal 
mind to comprehend the things of Christ, spoken of in 1 Cor.; e. g., 
ii : 14. This impotency (too plainly) exists. But those who hold 
with Dick cannot define it. They say it consists not in the absence of 
any revelation which the believer has. (That would be fanaticism.) 
Nor in the lack of any Faculty, which the regenerate gain. (This 
would be mysticism.) Nor in the hiding of any esoteric, allegorical 
sense of the Scripture, to which the believer has the key. (This would 
be Origenism.) In what, then, does this impotency consist? They 
have no answer. 

The carnal heart gives dicta opposed to Christ's. — But I, on 
my theory, can give a consistent answer, just that of Eph. iv : 18; 
Rom. viii: 7. "The blindness of the heart darkens the understand- 
ing." Calvinistic expositors even have been heard construing the 
striking words of Eph. iv: 18, thus: "Inasmuch as the head, and not 
the heart, is the seat of intelligence, when the Apostle speaks of 
'blindness of heart,' he must be understood as using the word 'heart' 
comprehensively, including the intelligence, as well as the affections, 
and even intending the former chiefly." In this perverse way do they 
shut their eyes to the invaluable instruction of the text. One would 
think that this exegetical reason should have taught them, that when 
the Apostle said "heart," he did not mean "understanding," because 
he has the term understanding already in the sentence. What the in- 
spired man would signify is clearly this, that opinion touching the 
objects of moral volition is the fruit of moral disposition — the head 
follows the heart. But the beliefs of the sinner's understanding, thus 
dictated by his carnal disposition, come in collision with certain pro- 
positions -which are postulates or premises to the most cardinal gospel 
teachings. No wonder, then, the mind does, not apprehend those teach- 
ings as true. For example, the sinner's real opinion (taught him 
by his carnal heart) is that carnality is sweet, perse. It is its penalty 
alone, which self-love apprehends as evil. No wonder, then, that his 
very understanding is confounded by a gospel which necessarily im- 
plies that carnality is an evil per se, and holds out salvation from car- 
nality aa a conscious good per se, to be desired, eagerly embraced, and 
devoutly celebrated with praises to God. The mother says to her 
little child : " Come up to me, and I will give you something good." 
He replies; "Mamma, you are up stairs; how shall I come?" She 
instructs him by what doors and turnings to reach her; and that in 
terms which, had he seen that the good thing which she has prepared 
fjr him was a lucious peach, would have been perspicuous enough. But 
just now, he spies the fact that it is a nauseous medicine she is preparing 
for him. Thereupon the proposal becomes quite mystifying to him ; 
and he is arrested as a stock. No wonder! 



OP LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 91 

LECTUKE XLVII. 



SYLLABUS. 
ARMINIAN THEORY OP REDEMPTION. 

1. Give a connected view of the Arminian Five Points. 

Articles of Synod of Dort. Whitby's Five Points. Hill's Divinity, Bk. 
iv, ch. 8. Stapfer's Pol. Theol., vol. iv, ch. 17, § 12-35. 

2. Disprove the doctrine of Common Sufficient Grace. 

Turrettin, Loc. xv, que. 3. Hill, Bk. iv, ch. 9, § 1. Ridgeley, que. 44. 
"Watson's Theol. Inst., ch. xxv. 

3. Is the grace of God in regeneration invincible ? And is the will of man in 
regeneration, active or passive ? 

Turrettin, Loc. xv, que. 5 and 6. Hill, Bk. iv, ch. 9. Knapp, § 130, 132. 

4. Can any Pagans be saved, without the instrumentality of the Scriptures ? 
Turrettin, Loc. i, que. 4, and Loc. x, que. 5. Ridgeley, que. 60. Annual 
Sermon for Presb. Board For. Miss., June, 1858. 

Sources of the Arminian Theology. — The subjects which are now 
brought under discussion introduce us to the very centre of the points 
which are debated between us and Arminians. I propose, therefore, 
for their farther illustration, and because no better occasion offers, to 
consider here their scheme. 

The sources of Arminian Theology would be best found in the apol- 
ogy of Episcopius, Limborch's Christian Theology, and Knapp's Chris- 
tian Theology. Among the English may be consulted, as a low Ar- 
minian, Daniel Whitby's Five Points ; as high Arminians, Wesley's 
Doctrinal Tracts, and Watson's Theological Institutes. For refutation 
of Arminianism, see Stapfer, vol. 4; Turrettin; Hill, Bk. 4, ch. 9. 

I. A connected view of the Arminian tenets: 

Five Points of remonstrants ambiguous. — The five points handed 
in by the Arminians to the States General of Holland, in their cele- 
brated remonstrance, were so covertly worded as scarcely to disclose 
their true sentiments. The assertions concerning original Sin and 
Free will, were seemingly such as Calvinists could accept. The doc- 
trine of common grace was but obscurely hinted ; and the perseverance 
of Saints was only doubted. Jut their system soon developed itself 
into semi-Pelagianism, well polished and knit together. Discarding 
the order of the five points, I will exhibit the theory in its logical 
connexions. 

Logical source in doctrine of Indifferency of the Will. 
View of original Sin. — 1. Its starting point is the doctrine of indif- 
ference of the will, and a denial of total depravity, as held by Calvin- 
ists. According to the universal consent of Pelagians and Socinians, 
this equilibrium of the will is held necessary to proper free agency and 
responsibility. Take Whitby as a type of the grosser Arminians. 
He thinks Adam was created li ble, but not subject, to bodily death, 
and his immunity in Paradise was secured by his access to the Tree of 
Life. His sin made death and its attendant pains inevitable; and this 
his posterity inherit, according to the natural law, that like begets like. 
This has produced a set of circumstances, making all men so liable to 



92 



SYLLABUS AND NOTES 



sin, that, practically, none escape. But this results from no moral 
necessity or certainty of the will. Man has natural desires for natural 
good, but this concupiscentia is not sin till formed into a positive voli- 
tion. But the sense of guilt and fear drives man from God, the 
pressure of earthly ills tends to earthly mindedness; man's pains 
makes him querilous, envious, inordinate in desire ; and above all, a 
general evil example misleads. So that all are, in fact, precipitated 
into sin, in virtue of untoward circumstances inherited from Adam. 
This is the only sense in which Adam is our federal head. This rela- 
tion is not only illustrated by, but similar to, that which exists between 
a bad parent and unfortunate offspring now — an instance of the same 
natural law. 

Wesleyan view of original sin. — But Wesley and Watson repu- 
diate this, as too low; and teach a fall in A.dam, prior to its reparation 
by common grace, going as far as moderate Calvinists. Watson, for 
instance, ch. 18, (vol. 2, p. 52,) while repudiating both mediate and 
immediate imputation of Adam's sin, (which he evidently does not 
understand,) says that Adam was a public person, our federal head, 
and that the penal consequences of his sin (not the sin itself) are im- 
puted to us, consisting of bodily ills and death, privations of God's 
indwelling, resulting in positive depravation, and eternal death. He 
adopts, in short, the doctrine of Dr. Watts against Br. Taylor, of Nor- 
wich. But in defending against Pelagians, &c, the justice of this 
arrangement of God, he says it must be viewed in connexion with that 
purpose of redemption towards the human race, which co-existed in 
the divine mind, by which God purposed to purchase and bestow com- 
mon grace on every fallen man, thus repairing his loss in Adam. (The 
fatal objection to such a justification is, that then God would have been 
under obligations to provide man a Saviour : and Christ's mission would 
not have been of pure grace.) 

Coimmon Sufficient Grace. — 2. This leads us to their next point : 
God having intended all along to repair the fall, and having immedi- 
ately thereafter given a promise to our first parents, has ever since 
communicated to all mankind a common preedaneous sufficient grace, 
purchased for all by Christ's work. This is not sufficient to effect a 
complete redemption, but to enable, both naturally and morally, to 
fulfil the conditions for securing redeeming grace. This common grace 
consists in the"indifferency of man's will remaining, notwithstanding 
his fall, the lights of natural conscience, good impulses enabling unre- 
generate men to do works of social virtue, the outward call of mercy 
made, as some Arminians suppose, even to heathens through reason, 
and some lower forms of universal spiritual influence. The essential 
idea and argument of the Arminian is, that God could not punish man 
justly for unbelief, unless He conferred on him both natural and moral 
ability to believe or not. They quote such Scripture as Ps. lxxxi: 13; 
Is. v : 4; Luke xix : 42; Bev. iii : 20; Bom. ii: 14; John i : 9. So 
here we have, by a different track, the old conclusion of the semi-Pela- 
gian. Man, then, decides the whole remaining difference, as to be- 
lieving or not believing, by his use of this precedent grace, according 
to his own free will. God's purpose to produce different results in 
different men is wholly conditioned on the use which, He foresees, they 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 93 

will make of their common grace. To those who improve it, God 
stands pledged to give the crowning graces of regeneration, justification, 
sanctification, and glorification. To the heathen, even, who use their 
light aright, (unfavourable circumstances may make such instances 
rare,) Christ will give gospel light and redeeming grace, in some in- 
scrutable way. 

Grace in regeneration vincible. — 3. Hence, the operations of 
grace are at every stage vincible by man's will; to be otherwise, they 
must violate the conditions of moral agency. Even after regeneration 
grace may be so resisted by free will, as to be dethroned from tbe soul, 
which then again becomes unrenewed. 

Redemption general. — 4. The redeeming work of Christ was 
equally for all and every man of the human race, to make his sins 
pardonable on the condition of faith, to purchase a common sufficient 
grace actually enjoyed by all, and the efficient graces of a complete 
redemption suspended on the proper improvement of common grace 
by free will. Christ's intention and provision are, therefore, the same 
to all. But as justice requires that the pardoned rebel shall believe 
and repent, to those who, of their own choice, refuse this, the provision 
remains forever ineffective. 

Justification. — 5. In the doctrine of justification, again, the lower 
and higher Arminians differ somewhat. Both define justification as 
consisting simply of pardon. According to the lower, this justification 
is only purchased by Christ in this, that He procured from God the 
admission of a lower Covenant, admitting faith and the Evangelical 
obedience flowing out of it, as a righteousness, in place of the perfect 
obedience of the Covenant of works. According to the higher, our 
faith (without the works it fruits) is imputed to us for righteousness, 
according, as they suppose, to Rom. iv: 5. Both deny the proper im- 
putation of Christ's active (as distinguished from his passive) obedience, 
and deny any imputation, except of the believer's own faith ; although 
the higher Arminians, in making this denial, seem to misunderstand 
imputation as a transference of moral character. 

Personal Election conditional. — G. Hence, it will be easily seen, 
that their conception of election must be the following: The only ab- 
solute and unconditional decree which God has made from eternity, 
concerning man's salvation, is His resolve that unbelievers shall perish . 
This is not a predestinating of individuals, but the fixing of a General 
Principle. God does, indeed, (as they explain Rom., ix-xi chapters,) 
providentially and sovereignly elect races to the enjoyment of certain 
privileges; but this is not an election to salvation; for free will may 
in any or each man of the race, abuse the privileges, and be lost. So 
far as God has an eternal purpose towards individuals, it is founded on 
His foresight, which He had from eternity, of the use they would make of 
their common grace. Some, He foresaw, would believe and repent, 
and therefore elected them to justification. Others, He foresaw, would 
not only believe and repent, but also persevere to the end; and these 
He elected to salvation. 

A thoroughly-knit system, if its premises are granted. 

II. The refutation of the Arminian theory must be deferred, on 



94 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

some points, till we pass to other heads of divinity, as Justification, 
and Final Perseverance. On the extent of the atonement enough has 
already been said. On the remaining points we shall now attempt to 
treat. 

Common Sufficient Grace refuted. — In opposition to the asser- 
tion of a common sufficient grace, we remark, 1st. That there is no suffi- 
cient evidence of it in Scripture. The passages quoted above do, in- 
deed, prove that God has done for all men under the gospel all that is 
needed to affect their salvation, if their own wills were not depraved. 
But they only express the fact that God's general benevolence would 
save all to whom the gospel comes, if they would repent; and that 
the obstacles to that salvation are now only in the sinners. But whether 
it is God's secret purpose to overcome that internal obstacle, in their 
own perverse wills, these texts do not say. It will be found, on ex- 
amination, that they all refer merely to the external call, which we 
have proved, comes short of the effectual call: or that they are ad- 
dressed to persons who, though shortcoming, or even backsliding, are 
regarded as God's children already. Look and see. 

Doctrine false, in fact. — 2. The doctrine is false in fact; for 
how can grace be sufficient, where the essential outward call, even, is 
lacking'? Rom. x : 14. God declares, in Scripture, He has given up 
many to evil. Acts xiv: 16; Bom. i: 21, 28; ix : 18. Again: the 
doctrine is contradicted by the whole doctrine of God, concerning the 
final desertion of those who have grieved away the Holy Ghost. See 
Hos. iv: 17; Gen. vi : 3; Heb. vi : 1-6. Here is a class so deserted 
of grace, that their damnation becomes a certainty. Are they, there- 
fore, no longer free, responsible, and blameable 1 

3. If we take the Arminian description of common sufficient grace, 
then many who have its elements most largely, an enlightened con- 
science, frequent compunctions, competent religious knowledge, amia- 
bility, and natural virtues, good impulses and resolutions, are lost ; 
and some, who seem before to have very little of these, are saved. 
How is this? Again: the doctrine does not commend itself to expe- 
rience ; for this tells us that, among men, good intentions are more rare 
than good opportunities. We see that some men have vastly more 
opportunity vouchsafed them by God's providence than others. It 
would be strange if, contrary to the fact just stated, all those who have 
less opportunity should have better intentions than opportunities. 

Common Grace, if sufficient, saves. — 4. We have sometimes il- 
lustrated the Wesleyan doctrine of common sufficient grace thus: "All 
men lie in the 'slough of despond' in consequence of the fall. There 
is a platform, say Arminians, elevated an inch or two above the surface 
of this slough, but yet firm, to which men must struggle in the exer- 
cise of their common sufficient grace alone, the platform of repentance 
and faith. Now, it is true, that from this platform man could no more 
climb to heaven without divine grace, than his feet could scale the 
moon. But God's grace is pledged to lift up to heaven all those who 
will so employ their free-agency, as to climb to that platform, and stay 
there." Now, we say, with the Arminian, that a common sufficient 
grace, which does not work faith and repentance, is in no sense suffi- 
cient; for until these graces are exercised, nothing is done. Heb. xi : 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 95 

6; Jno. iii : 36. But he who has these graces, we farther assert, has 
made the whole passage from life to death. That platform is the plat- 
form of eternal life. The whole difference between elect and non-elect 
is already constituted. See John iii : 36 ; 1 John v : 1 ; Acts xiii : 48 ; 
2 Cor. v: 17; with Eph. iii: 17. If then there is sufficient grace, it 
is none other than the grace which effectuates redemption; and the 
Armiuian should say, not that God by it puts it in every man's free 
will to fulfil the conditions on which further saving communications 
depend; but that He puts it in every man's free will to save .dmself. 

Or else, it is either not common, or not sufficient. — 5. If the 
doctrine is true, it is every man's own uninfluenced choice, and not the! 
purpose of God, which determines his eternal destiny. Either the 
common grace effects its saving work in those who truly believe, in 
virtue of some essential addition made to its influences by God, or it 
does not. If the former, then it was not "common," nor "sufficient," 
in those who failed to receive that addition. If the latter, then the 
whole difference in its success must have been made by the man's own 
free will resisting less — i. e., the essential opposition to grace in some 
souls, differs from that in others. But see Rom. iii: 12,27; Eccl. 
viii : 11; Eph. ii : 8, 9 ; 1 Cor. iv : 7 ; Rom. ix : 6 ; and the whole 
tenour of that multitude of texts, in which believers ascribe their re- 
demption, not to their own superior docility or penitence, but to dis- 
tinguishing grace. 

III. Grace in Regeneration invincible. — The views of regenera- 
tion which Calvinists present, in calling the grace of God therein 
invincible, and in denying the Synergisne (sunergeia) of man's 
will there in, necessarily flow from their view of original sin. 
We do not deny that the common call is successfully resisted by all 
non-elect gospel sinners; it is because God never communicates renew- 
ing grace, as He never intended, in His secret purpose. Nor do we 
deny that the elect, while under preliminary conviction, struggle 
against grace, with as much obstinacy as they dare ; this is ensured by 
their depraved nature. But on all those whom God purposes to save, 
He exerts a power, renewing and persuading the will, so as infallibly 
to ensure their final and voluntary submission to Christ. Hence, we 
prefer the word invincible to irresistable. This doctrine we prove by 
all those texts which speak of God's power in regeneration as a new 
creation, birth, resurrection ; for the idea of successful resistance to 
these processes, on the part of the dead matter, or corpse, or foetus, is 
preposterous. Conviction may be resisted ; regeneration is invincible. 
We prove it again from all those passages which exalt the divine and 
mighty power exerted in the work. See Eph. i: 19,20; Ps. ex : 3. 
Another emphatic proof is found in this, that otherwise, God could 
not be sure of the conversion of all those He purposed to convert ; 
yea, not of a single one of them ; and Christ would have no assurance 
that He should ever "see of the travail of His soul" in a single case! 
For in order for God to be sure of the result, He must put forth power 
adequate to overcome all opposing resistances. But see all those pas- 
sages, in which the security and immutability of God's purposes of 
grace are asserted. Rom. ix: 21,23, Eph. i; 4; John xv : 16, &c, 
&c. Eph. ii: 10. 



96 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Mere foreknowledge inadequate. — Here, the Arminians rejoins, 
that God's scientia media, or foreknowledge of the contingent acts of 
free agents, (arising not from His purpose of control over those acts, but 
from His infinite insight into their character, and the way it will act 
under foreseen circumstances,) enables Him to foreknow certainly who 
will improve their common grace, and that some will. His eternal 
purposes are not crossed therefore, they say, because He only purposed 
from eternity to save those latter. The fatal answer is, that if the 
acts of free agents are certainly foreseen, even with this scientia media, 
they are no longer contingent, but certain ; and worse than this ; Man's 
will being in bondage, all the foreknowledge which God has, from His 
infinite insight into human character, will be only a foreknowledge of 
obdurate acts of resistance on man's part, as long as that will is unsub- 
dued. God's foreknowledge, in that case, would have been a fore- 
knowledge that every son of Adam would resist and be lost. The only 
foreknowledge God could have, of any cases of submission, was one 
founded on His own decisive purpose to make some submit, by invinci- 
ble grace. 

Grace does not destroy free-agency. — The Arminian objects 
again, that our doctrine represents man as dragged reluctating into a 
state of grace, like an angry wild beast into a cage ; whereas, freedom 
of will, and hearty concurrence are essential elements of all service 
acceptable to God. The answer is, that the sinner's will is the very 
subject of this invincible grace. God so renews it that it neither can 
resist, nor longer wishes to resist. But this objection virtually re- 
appears in the next part of the question. 

The soul passive in its quickening. Proof. — Calvinists are ac- 
customed also to say, in opposition to all Synergistic views, that the 
will of man is not active, but only passive in regeneration. In this 
proposition, it is only meant that man's will is the subject, and not the 
agent, nor one of the agents of the distinctive change. In that reno- 
vating touch, which revolutionizes the active powers of the soul, it is 
acted on and not agent. Yet, activity is the inalienable attribute of 
an intelligent being; and in the process of conversion, which begins 
instantaneously with regeneration, the soul is active in all its exercises 
towards sin, holiness, God, its Saviour, the law, &c, &c. 

This doctrine is proved by the natural condition of the active powers 
of the soul. Man's propensities are wholly and certainly directed to 
some form of ungodliness, and to impenitency. How, then, can the 
will, prompted by these propensities, persuade itself to anything spi- 
ritually good and penitent? It is expecting a cause to operate in a 
direction just the opposite to its nature — as well expect gravity to raise 
masses flung into the air, when its nature is to bring them down. And 
this is agreeable to the whole Bible representation. Does the foetus 
procure its own birth? the dead body its own resurrection? the matter 
of creation its own organization? See especially John i : 13. Yet 
this will, thus renewed, chooses God, and acts holiness, freely, just as 
Lazarus, when resuscitated, put forth the activities of a living man. 

The objections of the Arminian may all be summed up in this : that 
sinners are commanded, not only to put forth all the actings of the 
renewed nature, such as believing, turning from sin, loving God, &c, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 97 

but are commanded to perform the very act of giving their hearts to 
God, which seems to contain the very article of regeneration. See 
Prov. xxiii: 26; Is. i : 16; Ezek. xviii : 31; Deut. x : 16. 

Objection answered. — The answer is, 1st. That God's precepts are 
no test of the extent of our moral ability, but only of our duty. When 
our Creator has given to us capacities to know and love Him, and the 
thing which prevents is our depraved wills, this is no reason why He 
should or ought to cease demanding that which is His due. If the 
moral opposition of nature into which God's creatures may sink them- 
selves by their own fault, were a reason why He should cease to urge 
His natural rights on them, He would soon have no right left. Again : 
the will of man, when renovated by grace, needs a rule by which to 
put forth its renewed activity, just as the eye, relieved of its darkness 
by the surgeon, needs light to see. Hence, we provide light for the 
renovated eye ; not that light alone could make the blind eye see. 
And hence, God applies His precepts to the renovated will, in order 
that it mny have a law by which to act out its newly bestowed, spirit- 
ual free-agency. But 3d, and chiefly : These objections are all removed, 
by making a sound distinction between regeneration and conversion. 
In the latter the soul is active ; and the acts required by all the above 
passages, are the soul's (now regenerate) turning to God. 

Bible promises no salvation to Heathen. — The salvability of any 
heathen without the gospel is introduced here, because the question 
illustrates these views concerning the extent of the grace of redemp- 
tion, and the discussions between us and the Armiuians. We must 
hold that Revelation gives us no evidence that Pagans can find salva- 
tion, without Scriptural means. They are sinners. The means in 
their reach appear to contain no salvation, a.) One argument is this: 
All of them are self-convicted of some sin, (against the light of nature.) 
"Without the shedding of blood is no remission." But the gospel is 
the only proposal of atonement to man. b.) Paganism provides noth- 
ing to meet the other great want of human nature, an agency for moral 
renovation. Is any man more spiritually minded than decent children 
of the Church are, because he is a Pagan? Do they need the new 
birth less than our own beloved offspring 1 Then it must be at least 
as true of the heathen, that except they be born again, they shall not 
see the kingdom. But their religions present no agencies for regene- 
ration. They do not even know the word. So far are their theologies 
from any sanctifying influence, their morals are immoral, their deities 
criminals, and the heaven to which they aspire a pandemonium of sen- 
sual sin immortalized. 

God no more unjust to them than to non-elect under the 
gospel. — Now, the Arminians reject this conclusion, thinking God 
cannot justly condemn any man, who is not furnished with such means 
of knowing and loving Him, as put His destiny in every sense within 
His own choice. These means the heathen do not fully possess, where 
their ignorance is invincible. The principle asserted is, that God can- 
not justly hold any man responsible, who is not blessed with both 
"natural and moral ability." I answer, that our doctrine concerning 
the heathen puts them in the same condition with those unhappy men 
in Christian lands, who have the outward word, but experience no ef- 



98 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

fectual calling of the Spirit. God requires the latter to obey that 
Law and Gospel, of which they enjoy the clearer lights; and the ob- 
stacle which ensures their failure to obey is, indeed, not any physical 
constraint, but an inability of will. Of the heathen, God would re- 
quire no more than perfect obedience to the light of nature ; and it is 
the same inability of will which ensures their failure to do this. 
Hence, as you see, the doctrine of a common sufficient grace, and of 
the salvability of the heathens, are parts of the same system. 



LECTURE XLVIII. 



SYLLABUS. 

AEMINIAN SCHEME. (Concluded.) 

1. Are God's decrees of personal election conditional or unconditional ? 
Turrettin, Loc. iv, que. 3, § 1-7. Que. 11, § 10-24. Loc. xv, que. 2, 3. 
Hill, Bk. iv, ch. 7, and ch. x. Dick, Lect. 35. Knapp, Chr. Theol., § 32, 
and Note. Watson's Theol. Inst., ch. xxvi. 

2. Show the relations between the orthodox views of effectual calling and 
election, and the true theory of the will and free-agency, a.) That the natural 
will is certainly determined to carnality, and yet free-agency exists therein, b.) 
That the renewed will, after it is sovereignly renewed to godliness, and effica- 
ciously preserved therein, is yet more free : And therefore, responsibility ex- 
ists in both states. 

See Lect. ix, pt. i.^n Will.) Turrettin, Loc. x, que. iv. Alexander's 
Mor. Science, ch. 16 lu 18. Hill, Bk. iv, ch. ix, § 3. Edwards on Will, 
pt. i, ch. 3, and pt. iii. Watson's Theol. Inst., ch. xxviii, § 3. 

1. Conditional Decrees are implied in Synergism. — The favourite 
Arminian dogma, that God's will concerning the salvation of individ- 
uals is conditioned on His simple foresight of their improvement of 
their common grace, in genuine faith, repentance, and holy obedience, 
is necessary to the coherency of their system. If grace is invincible, and 
all true faith, &c, are its fruits, then God's purpose as to working them 
must be absolute in this sense. If grace is only synergistic, and the sin- 
ner's free will alone decides the question of resisting it or co-operatinc 
with it, then, of course, the sovereignty of decision, in this matter, is in 
the creature, and not in God ; and He must be guided in His purpose 
by what it is foreseen the creature will choose to do. Thus we 
reach, by a corollary from the Arminian doctrine of "Calling," that 
which in time is first, the nature of the Divine purpose about it. The 
student is here referred to the Lecture on the Decree, in Pt. I. But 
as the subject is so illustrative of the two theories of redemption, the 
Arminian and the orthodox, I shall not hesitate to discuss the same 
thing again, and to reproduce some of the same ideas. 






OF LECTURES IK THEOLOGY. 99 

The Result may be conditioned, and not the Decree. — And 
let me begin by reminding you of that plain distinction, by the ignor- 
ing of which Arminians get all the plausibility of their view. It is one 
thing to say that, in the Divine will, the result purposed is conditioned 
on the presence of its means ; another thing to say that, God's pur- 
pose about it is also conditioned or dependent on the presence of its 
means. The former is true, the latter false. And this, because the 
presence of the means is itself efficaciously included in this same 
Divine purpose. Thus, a believer's salvation is doubtless dependent 
on his repentance ; in the sense that, if he does not repent, he will not 
be saved. But God's purpose to save him is not dependent on his 
choosing to repent; for one of the things which God's purpose effica- 
ciously determines is, that this believer shall have grace to repent. 
Remember, also, that when we say God's election is not dependent on 
the believer's foreseen faith, &c, we do not represent the Divine purpose 
as a motiveless caprice. It is a resolve founded most rationally, doubt- 
less, on the best of reasons — only, the superior faith and penitence of 
that man were not, a priori among them ; because had not God already 
determined, from some better reasons unknown to us, that man would 
never have had any faith or repentance to foresee. And this is a per- 
fect demonstration, as well as a Scriptural one. The Arminian opinion 
makes an effect the cause of its own cause. And that our faith, &c, 
are effects of our calling and election, see Rom. viii : 29 ; Eph. i : 4, 5 ; 
2 Thes. ii : 13 ; 1 Cor. iv : 7 ; Jno. xv : 16. 

Providence makes Sovereign distinctions in men's outward op- 
portunities. Especially of Infants. — b.) But to this I may add 
the same idea in substance, which I used against Common Sufficient 
Grace : That, in fact, differences are made, in the temperaments and 
characters, opportunities and privileges of individuals and nations, 
which practically result in the death of seme in sin. Thus: what 
practical chance, humanly speaking, had the man born in Tahiti, in the 
18th century, for redemption through Christ ] Now, the Arminian 
himself admits an election of races or nations to such privilege, which 
is sovereign. Does not this imply a similar disposal of the fate of 
individuals] Can an infinite understanding fail to comprehend the 
individuals, in disposing of the destiny of the mass ] But, under this 
head especially, I remark : the time of every man's death is decided 
by a sovereign Providence. But by determining this sovereignty, God 
very often practically decides the man's eternal destiny. Much more 
obvious is this in the case of infants. According to Arminians, all 
that die in infancy are saved. So, then, God's purpose to end their 
mortal life in infancy is His purpose to save them. But this purpose 
cannot be formed from any foresight of their faith or repentance; be- 
cause they have none to foresee, being saved without them. 

If foreseen, faith must be certain. — c.) God's foresight of be" 
lievers' faith and repentance implies the certainty, or " moral necessity'' 
of these acts, just as much as a sovereign decree. For that which is 
certainly foreseen must be certain. The only evasion from this is the 
absurdity of Adam Clarke, that God chooses not to foreknow certain 
things, or the impiety of the Socinians, that He cannot foreknow some 
things. On both, we may remark, that if this faith and repentance 



100 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

are not actually foreknown, they cannot be the bases of any resolve 
on God's part. 

Immutable Decree cannot be conditioned on a mutable cause. 
Scripture. — d.) That any purposes of God should depend on the acts 
of a creature having an intermediate, contingent will, such as the Armin- 
ian describes, is incompatible with their immutability and eternity. 
But all His decrees are such. See Ps. xxxiii: 11; 2 Tim. ii : 19; 
Eph.i: 4; Is. xlvi : 10. In a word, this doctrine places the sover- 
eignty in the creature, instead of God, and makes Him wait on His 
own servant. It is disparaging to God. 

Last: This very purpose of individual election to salvation is often 
declared to be uncaused by any foreseen good in us. See Matt, xi : 
26 ; Rom. ix: 11,16; xi : 5-6, &c. 

Texts seeming to express a conditioned Purpose. — But Armin- 
ians cite many passages, in which they assert, God's resolve as to what 
He shall do to men is conditioned on their good or bad conduct. They 
are such as 1 Sam. xiii : 13; Ps. lxxxi : 18, 14 ; Luke vii : 30; Ezek. xviii : 
21, &c. Luke xix- 42. Our opponents here make an obvious confusion of 
things, which should be distinguished. When God, perceptively, re- 
veals a connexion between two alternative lines of conduct, and their 
respective results, as established by His law or promise, He does not 
at all reveal anything thereby, as to what He purposes with reference 
to permitting or procuring the exercise of that conduct by man. Of 
course, it does not imply that His purpose on this point is contingent 
to Him, or that the consequent results were uncertain to Him. We 
have seen that many of the results decreed by God were dependent on 
means which man employed; but that God's resolve was not dependent, 
because it secretly embraced their performance of those instrumental 
acts also. But the proof that the Armini.ans misconstrue those Scrip- 
ture instances, is this : That the Bible itself contains many instances 
of these conditional threats and promises, and expressions of compas- 
sion, where yet the result of them is expressly foretold. If expressly 
predicted, they must have been predetermined. See, then, Is. i : 19, 
20, compared with vii ; 17-20. And more striking yet: Acts xxvii . 
23-25, with v : 31. 

Evasion attempted from Rom., ch. ix : 11. — Bora, ix : 11-18, is 
absolutely conclusive against conditional election. The only evasion 
by which the Arminian can escape its force, is that this passage repre- 
sents only a national election of Israel and Edom, represented in their 
patriarchs, Jacob, and Esau, to the outward privileges of the gospel. 
We reply, as in Part I, Tnat Jacob and Esau certainly represented 
themselves also, so that here are two cases of unconditional predestina- 
tion. But Paul's scope shows that the idea is false; for that scope is 
to explain, how, on his doctrine of justification by grace, many mem- 
bers of Israel were lost, notwithstanding equal outward privileges. 
And in answering this question, the Apostle evidently dismisses the 
corporate, or collective, in order to consider the individual relation to 
God's plan and purpose. See the verses 8, 15, 24. That the election 
was not merely to privilege, is clearly proved by the illusion of v. 8, 
compared with verses 4, 21 to 24. 

Calvinistic view agreeable to the true Nature of the Will. 
— 2. I am now to show that the Calvinistic scheme is consistent, and 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. ioi 

the Arminian inconsistent with the philosophical theory of the will and 
free-agency. Let me here refer you to Part I, Lecture IX, where the 
true doctrine of the will is stated and defended, and request you, if 
your mastery of the views there given is not perfect, to return and 
make it so, before proceeding. While I shall not repeat the argu- 
ments, the definition of the true doctrine is so important (and has so 
often been imperfectly made by Calvinists) that I shall take the liberty 
to restate it. 

True theory of the Will stated. — The Arminian says that free- 
agency consists in the self-determining power of the will, as a distinct 
faculty in the soul. The Calvinists says, it consists in the self-deter- 
mining power of the soul. The Arminian says an agent is only free, 
when he has power to choose as the will may determine itself either 
way, irrespective of the stronger motive The Calvinists says that an 
agent is free, when he has power to act as his own will chooses. The 
Arminian says that in order to be free, the agent must be exempt from 
the efficient influence of his own motives; the Oalvinist, that he must 
be exempt from co-actiou, or external constraint. The Arminian says, 
that in order to be free, the agent must always be capable of having a 
volition uncaused. The Calvinist says that if an agent has a volition 
uncaused, he cannot possibly be free therein, because that volition 
would be wholly irrational ; the agent would therein be simply a brute. 
Every free, rational, responsible volition is such, precisely because it 
is caused; the rational agent is morally judged for his volitions accord- 
ing to their motives, or causes. 

Motive What? — But when we ask ; What is the motive of a rational 
volition, we must make that distinction which all Arminians,and many 
Calvinists heedlessly overlook, between motive and inducement. The 
object offered to the soul as an inducement to choose is not the cause, 
the motive of the choice ; but only the occasion. The true, efficient 
cause is something of the soul's own, something subjective ; namely, 
the soul's own habitys, or prevalent subjective disposition. The voli- 
tion is not efficaciously caused by the inducement, or object which 
appeals, but by the disposition which is appealed to. Thus, the causa- 
tive spring of a free agent's action is within, not without him ; according 
to the testimony of our consciousness. (The theory which makes the objec- 
tive inducement the true cause of volition, is from that old, mischievous, 
sensualistic psycholog} T , which has always been such a curse to theology.) 
But then, this inward or subjective spring of action is not lawless; it 
is not indeterminate; if it were, the agent would neither have ration- 
ality nor character; and its action would be absolutely blind and bru- 
tish. This subjective spring has a law of its own activity — that is to 
say, its self-action is of a determinate character, (of one sort, or an- 
other.) And that character is what is meant by the radical habitus, or 
natural disposition of the agent. And this subjective disposition is 
what gives uniform quality to that series of acts, by which common 
sense estimates the character of an agent. (And this, as we saw, was 
a sufficient proof of our doctrine ; that otherwise, the exhibition of 
determinate character by a free agent, would be inpossible.) God is 
an excellent Agent, because He has holy original disposition. Satan 
is a wicked agent, because he has an unholy disposition, &c. 



102 SYLLABUS AND KOTES 

Disposition What? — Now, this habitus or disposition of soul is not 
by any means always absolutely simple : it is a complex of certain 
active principles, with mental habitudes proceeding therefrom, and 
modified by outward circumstances. With reference to some sorts of 
outward inducements, these active principles may act with less uniform- 
ity and determinateness ; with reference to others, with more. Here, 
modifying outward influences may change the direction of the princi- 
ples. The avaricious man is sometimes prompted to generous volitions, 
for instance. But our common sense recognizes this truth: that the 
more original and primary of those active principles, constituting a 
being's disposition or habitus, are perfectly determinate and uniform 
in their action. For instance: no being, when happiness and suffering 
are the alternatives, is ever prompted by his own disposition, to choose 
the suffering for its own sake ; no being is ever prompted, applause or 
reproach being equally in its reach, to prefer the reproach to the ap- 
plause for its own sake. And last : this disposition, while never the 
effect of specific acts of volition, (being always a priori thereto, and 
cause of them) is spontaneous: that is, in exercising the disposition, 
both in consideration and choice, the being is self-prompted. 

This theory obvious. Calvinism in harmony with it. — Is not 
this now the psychology of common sense and consciousness 1 Its mere 
statement is sufficiently evincive of its truth. But you have seen a 
number of arguments by which it is demonstrated, and the rival theory 
reduced to absurdity. Now, our assertion is, that the Calvinistic doc- 
trine of effectual calling is agreeable to these facts of our free-agency, 
and the Arminian inconsistent with them. 

Grace cannot produce an equilibrium between holiness and 
sin. — a.) First, the equilibrium of will, to which Arminians suppose 
the gospel restores all sinners, through common sufficient grace, would 
be an unnatural and absurd state of soul, if it existed. You will re- 
member that the Wesleyans (the Arminian school which we meet) 
admit that man lost equilibrium of will in the fall ; but say that it is 
restored through Christ; and that this state is necessary to make man 
truly free and responsible in choosing the Saviour. But we have 
shown that such a state is impossible for an active agent, and irrational. 
So far as it existed, it would only show the creature's action irrational, 
like that of the beasts. Hence, the evangelical choice arising in such 
a state would be as motiveless, as reasonless, and therefore, as devoid 
of ria;ht moral character, as the act of a man walking in his sleep. 
And, to retort the Arminian's favourite conclusion, all the so-called 
gracious states of penitence, &c, growing out of that choice, must be 
devoid of right moral quality. How can those exercises of soul have 
that quality? Only as they are voluntary, and prompted by right 
moral motives. But as we have seen, motive is subjective; so that 
the action of soul cannot acquire right moral quality until it is 
prompted by right moral disposition. Hence, if that common sufficient 
grace were - anything at all, it would be the grace of moral renovation; 
all who had it would be regenerate. 

The natural Will decisively bent to carnality. — b.) Second: 
we have seen that the notion of a moral agent without determinate, 
subjective moral character, of some sort, is absurd. The radical, 
ruling habitus has some decisive bent of its own, some way or other. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 103 

Is not this simply to say that disposition is disposed? The question of 
fact then arises, which is the bent or determinate direction, which man's 
natural disposition has, touching spiritual things? Is it for, or against? 
Or, as a question of fact, is the disposition of mankind naturally, and 
uniformly, either way? Or, are some men one way disposed by nature, 
and some the other, as to this object? The answer is, that they are all 
naturally disposed, in the main, the same way, and that, against the 
spiritual claims of Christ and God. What are these claims? That 
the sinner shall choose the holy will of God over his own, and His 
favour over sensual, earthly, and sinful joys in all their forms. Noth- 
ing less than this is evangelical repentance and obedience. Now note, 
we do not say that no men ever choose any formal act of obedience by 
nature. Nor, that no man ever desires (what he conceives to be) future 
blessedness by nature. Nor, that every natural man is as much bent 
on all forms of rebellion, as every other. But we assert, as a matter 
of fact, that all naturally prefer self-will to God's holy will, and 
earthly, sensual, and sinful joys (in some forms) to God's favour and 
communion; that this is the original, fundamental, spontaneous dispo- 
sition of all ; and that in all essential alternatives between self and 
God, the disposition is, in the natural man, absolutely determinate and 
certain. If this is true, then the unconverted man without sovereign 
grace is equally certain to choose carnally, and equally a free agent in 
choosing so. 

Proved by consciousness and experience. — But that such is the 
determinate disposition of every natural man, is obvious both from 
experience and from Scripture. Every renewed man, in reviewing his 
own purposes, is conscious that, before regeneration, self-will was, as 
against God, absolutely dominant in all his feelings and purposes; of 
which no stronger test can be imagined than this conscious fact; that 
the very best religious impulses to which his soul could be spurred by 
remorse or alarm were but modifications of self-will, (self-righteous- 
ness.) Every true Christian looks back to the time when he was abso- 
lutely incompetent to find, or even to imagine any spontaneous good 
or joy in anything except carnality ; and the only apprehension it was 
possible for him to have of God's service, in looking forward to the 
time when, he supposed, the fear of hell would compel him to under- 
take it, was of a constraint and a sacrifice. So, when we look without, 
while we see a good many in the state of nature, partially practising 
many secular virtues, and even rendering to God some self-righteous 
regards, we see none preferring God's will and favour to self-will and 
earth. All regard such a choice as an evil perse ; all shrink from it 
obstinately ; all do so under inducements to embrace it which reasona- 
bly ought to be immense and overwhelming. The experimental evi- 
dence that this carnality is the original and determinate law of their 
disposition is as complete as that which shows that desire of happiness 
is a law of their disposition. And all this remains true of sinners 
under the rrospel, of sinners enlightened, of sinners convicted and 
awakened by the Holy Ghost in His common operations; which is a 
complete practical proof that there is not any such sufficient grace, 
common to all, as brings their wills into equilibrium about evangelical 
good. For those are just the elements which the Arminians name, as 
making up that grace : and we see that where they are, still there is 



104 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

no equilibrium, but the old, spontaneous, native bent obstinately domi- 
nant still. 

Proved by Scripture — The decisiveness of that disposition is also 
asserted in Scripture in the strongest possible terms. All men are the 
: ' servants of sin." Jno. viii ; 34; Rom. vi; 12; 2 Pet. ii : 19. They 
are "sold under sin." Rom. vii : 14. They are "in the bond of ini- 
quity." Acts viii: 23. They are "dead in sins." Eph. ii;l. They 
are "blind;" yea, "blindness" itself. Eph. iv : 18. Their "hearts 
are stony." Ezek. xxxvi : 26. They are "impotent" for evangelical 
good. Jno. xv:5; Rom. v : 6; Matt, vii: 18; xii: 34; Jno. vi: 44. 
" The carnal mind is enmity, and cannot be subject to the law of G-od." 
2 Co. iii: 5. Surely these, with the multitude of similar testimonies, 
are enough to prove against all ingenious glosses, that our view of man's 
disposition is true. But if man's free-agency is misdirected by such 
active principles as these, original, uniform, absolutely decisive, it is 
folly to suppose that the mighty revolution to holiness can originate in 
that free-agency; it must originate without, in almighty grace. 

Inability does not supercede Responsibility. — Nor is it hard for 
the mind which has comprehended this philosophy of common sense 
and experience, to solve the current Arminian objection : that the be- 
ing in such a state of will cannot be responsible or blameworthy for 
his continued impenitency. This "inability of will" does not super- 
cede either free-agency or responsibility. 

Inability defined. — There is here an obvious distinction from that 
external coaction, which the reason and conscience of every man re- 
cognizes as a different state, which would supercede responsibility. 
The Calvinists of the school of Jonathan Edwards make frequent use 
of the terms, "moral inability," "natural inability," to express that 
plain old distinction. Turrettin teaches us that they are not new. In 
his Locus, x, que. 4, § 39, 40, you will find some very sensible remarks, 
which show that this pair of terms is utterly ambiguous and inappro- 
priate, however good the meaning of the Calvinists who used them. I 
never employ them. That state which they attempt to describe as 
"moral inability," our Confession more accurately calls, loss of all 
"ability of will." (Ch. ix, § 3.) It should be remarked here, that in 
this phrase, and in many similar ones of our Confession, the word 
" will " is used in a sense more comprehensive than the specific faculty 
of choosing. It means the "conative powers," (so called by Hamil- 
ton,) including with that specific function, the whole active power of 
soul. The "inability," then, which we impute to the natural man, 
and which does not supercede responsibility, while it does make his 
voluntary continuance in impenitence absolutely certain, and his turn- 
ing of himself to true holiness impossible, is a very distinct thing from 
that physical coaction, and that natural lack of essential faculties, 
either of which would be inconsistent with moral obligation. It is 
thus defined in Hodge's outlines: "Ability consists in the power of 
the agent to change his own subjective state, to make himself prefer 
what he does not prefer, and to act in a given case in opposition to the 
co-existent desires and preferences of the agent's own heart." I will 
close with a statement of the distinction, which I uttered under very 
responsible circumstances. "All intelligent Calvinists understand 





OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 105 

very well, that " inability" consists not in the extinction of any of the 
powers which constituted man the creature he was before Adam's fall, 
and which made his essence as a religious being ; but in the thorough 
moral perversion of them all. The soul's essence is not destroyed by 
the fall ; if it were, in any part, man's responsibility would be to that 
extent modified. But all his faculties and susceptibilities now have a 
decisive and uniform, a native and universal, a perpetual and total 
moral perversion, by reason of the utter revolt of his will from God 
and holiness, to self-will and sin ; such that it is impossible for him, 
in his own free will, to choose spiritual good for its own sake." 

Regeneration does not violate, but perfects Free-agency. — 
c.) Regeneration, correspondingly, does not constrain a man to will 
against his dispositions ; but it renews the dispositions themselves. It 
reverses the morbid and perverse bias of the will. It rectifies the 
action of all faculties and affections, previously perverted by that bias. 
God's people are " willing in the day of His power.'' Ps. ex: 3. "He 
worketh in them both to will and to do of His good pleasure." Phil, 
ii : 13. In that believers now form holy volitions at the prompting of 
their own subjective principles, unconstrained by force, they are pre- 
cisely as free as when, before, they spontaneously formed sinful volitions 
at the prompting of their opposite evil principles. But in that the 
action of intellect and desire and conscience is now rectified, purified, 
ennobled, by the divine renovation, the believer is more free than he 
was before. "He cannot sin, because the living and incorruptible seed" 
of which he is born again " liveth and abideth in him." Thus, regene- 
nation, though almigbty, does not infringe free-agency, but perfects it. 

Objection solved. — The standing Arminian objection is, that man 
oannot be praise, or blame-worthy for what does not proceed from his 
own free-will. Hence, if he does not primarily choose a new heart, 
but it is wrought in him by another, he has no more moral credit, 
either for the change or its consequences, than for the native colour of 
his hair. This objection is, as you have seen, of a Pelagian source. 
By the same argument Adam could have had no concreated righteous- 
ness ; but we saw that the denial of it to him was absurd. By the 
same reasoning God Himself could have no moral credit for His holy 
volitions ; for He never chose a righteousness, having been eternally 
and necessarily righteous. "We might reply, also, that the new and 
holy state is chosen by the regenerate man, for his will is as free and 
self-moved, when renovated, in preferring his own renovation, as it ever 
was in sinning. 

This because the spirit moulds Disposition a priori to the 
Will. — To sum up, then : The quickening touch of the Holy Ghost 
operates, not to contravene any of the free actings of the will; but to 
mould dispositions which lie back of it. Second : all the subsequent 
right volitions of the regenerate soul are in view of inducements ra- 
tionally presented to it. The Spirit acts, not across man's nature, but 
according to its better law. Third : the propensities by which the re- 
newed volitions are determined are now noble, not ignoble, harmonious, 
not confused and hostile, and rational, not unreasonable. Man is most 
truly free when he has his soul most freely subjected to God's holy 
will. See those illustrious passages in John viii : 36; 2 Cor. iii : 17; 
Rom. viii: 21. 



106 



SYLLABUS AND NOTES 



LECTURE XLIX 



SYLLABUS. 



FAITH. 



1. How many kinds of faith are mentioned in the Bible ? Show that tempo- 
rary and saving faith differ in nature. 

See, on whole, Conf. of Faith, ch. xvi. Shorter Cat., que. 86. Larger 

Cat., que. 72. Turrettin, Loc. xv, que. 7, que. 15, § 1-10. Ridgeley, que. 

72. Dick, Lect. 68. Knapp, § 123. 

"What is the immediate object of saving faith ? 

Turrettin, Loc. xv, que. 12, § 7-11. Dick, as above. Hill, Bk, v, ch. 1, 

near the end. Knapp, § 123. 

Is faith implicit, or intelligent ? 

Turrettin, que. 9, § 1-10. Knapp, § 122. Hill, Bk. v, ch. 1. 
4. "What are the elements which make up saving Faith ? Is it a duty and un- 
belief a sin ? Does faith precede regeneration? 

Turrettin, Loc. xv, que. 8. Hill, as above. A. Fuller, " Strictures on San- 

deman," Letters 2, 3, 7. Alexanders Relig. Experience, cb. 6. CI ai- 
mer's Inst, of Theol., vol- ii, ch. 6. Ridgeley, que. 72, 73. Watson's 

Theol. Inst., cb. xxiii. § 3. Knapp, § 122. 

Is Christian love the formal principle of faith ? 

Council of Trent, Sesson vi, ch. 7. Calvin, Inst., Bk. iii, ch. 2, § 8 to 10. 

Turrettin, que. 13. 

Is assurance of belief, or assurance of hope, either, or both, of the essence 
of saving faith ? 

Council of Trent ; Can, de Justif., 12 to 16. Calvin, as above, § 7 to 14. 

Dick, as above. Turrettin, que. 17. Conf. of Faith, ch. IS. Ridgeley, 

que. 72, 73. "Watson's Theo. Inst. ch. xxiv, § ii. 

"Why is this faith suitable to be the instrument of justification? 

Ridgeley, que. 73. 



2. 



3. 



5. 



6. 



7. 



I. Faith of four kinds. Temporary Faith not of the kind of 
Saving. — After noting those cases, as 1 Tim. i: 19, where Faith is 
evidently used for its object, we may say that the Scriptures evidently 
mention four kinds — historical, temporary, saving, and miraculous. 
As the only difference among theologians in this list respects the ques- 
tion, whether temporary and saving faith are generically different, we 
shall only enlarge on this. Arminians regard them as the same, in all 
except their issue. This we deny. Because: a.) The efficient cause 
of saving faith is effectual calling, proceeding from God's immutable 
election. Titus i : 1 ; Acts xiii : 48 : that of temporary faith is the 
•ommon call, b.) The subject of saving faith is a "good heart;" a 
regenerate soul : that of temporary faith is a stony soul. See Matt. 
xiii: 5, 6, with 8 ; John iii : 36, or 1 John v: 1, with Acts viii : 13 
and 23. c.) The firmness and substance of the two differ essentially. 
Matt, xiii: 21; 1 Pet. i: 23. d.) Their objects are different: saving 
faith embracing Christ as He is offered in the gospel, a Saviour from 
sin to holiness: and temporary faith embracing only the impunity and 
enjoyments of the Christian, e.) Their results are different: the one 
bearing all the fruits of sanctification, comfort, and perseverance ; the 
other bearing no fruit unto perfection. See the parable of the sower 
again. 

II. Christ the special Object of Faith. — The special object of 
saving faith is Christ the Redeemer, and the promises of grace in Ilim, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 107 

By this, we do not mean that any true believer will wilfully and 
knowingly regret any of the other propositions of Cod's word. For 
the same habit of faith, or disposition of holy assent and obedience to 
God's authority, which causes the embracing of gospel propositions, 
will cause the embracing of all others, as fast as their evidence be- 
comes known. But we mean that in justifying faith, Christ and His 
grace is the object immediately before the believer's mind ; and that 
if he have a saving knowledge of this, but be ignorant of all the rest 
of the gospel, he may still be saved by believing this. The evidences 
are, that the gospel is so often spoken of as the object of faith ; [but 
this is about Christ;] e. g., Mark xvi: 15, 16; Eph. i : 13; Mark i : 
15; Rom. i: 16, 17; et passi'ii That believing on Christ is so often 
mentioned as the sole condition, and that, to men who must probably 
have been ignorant of many heads of divinity; e. g., Acts xvi : 31 ; 
Jno. iii : 18; vi : 40; Rom. x; 9, &c. The same thing may be ar- 
gued from the experiences of Bible saints, who represent themselves as 
fixing their eyes specially on Christ. 1 Tim. i : 15, &c, and trom the 
two sacraments of faith, which point immediately to Jesus Christ. 
Still, this special faith is in its habitus a principle of hearty consent 
to all Grod's holy truth as fast as it is apprehended as His. Faith 
embraces Christ substantially in all His offices. Urge, as of great 
practical importance, especially, as Sanctifier, as well as Reconciler. 
See Matt, i: 21; 1 Cor. i: 30. Cat. que., 86, (" as He is offered to 
us in the gospel.") Conf., ch. 14, § 2, near end. Hodge's Outlines, 
ch. 27, que. 30. 

III. Faith must be explicit. — The papists represent faith as an 
implicit exercise of the mind, in which the believer accepts the doc- 
trines, not because of his own clear understanding of their evidence, 
but because of the pious and submissive temper of mind towards the 
Church, her authority being, to Romanists, the ground of faith. Faith 
accordingly may be compatible with ignorance, both of the other evi- 
dence, (besides the Church's assertion,) and of the very propositions 
themselves ; so that a man may embrace with his faith, doctrines, when 
he not only does not see evidence for them, but does not know what 
they are ! Indeed, says Aquinas: Since agape is the formative prin- 
ciple of faith, the less a man's acceptance of the Catholic doctrine 
proceeds from intelligence and the more from the impulse of right 
dispositions, the more praiseworthy it is. This description of faith is 
evidently the only one consistent with a denial of private judgment. 

Proofs of Romanists invalid. — Protestants, on the other hand, 
hold that faith must be explicit and intelligent ; or it cannot be proper 
faith — that the propositions embraced must be known; and the evidence 
therefor comprehended intelligently. They grant to Aquinas, that faith 
derives its moral quality from the holiness of principles and voluntary 
moral dispositions actuating the exercise; but bis conclusion in favour of 
an unintelligent faith is absurd, because voluntary moral dispositions can 
only act legitimately, through an intelligent knowledge of their objects. 
The right intelligence is in order to the right feeling. Protestants, 
again distinguish between a comprehension of the evidence, and a full 
comprehension of the proposition. The former is the rational ground 
of belief, not t he latter. Many propositions, not only in theology, but 



i08 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

in other sciences, are rationally believed, because tbeir evidences ard 
intelligently seen, when the propositions themselves are not fully or 
even at all comprehended. This distinction answers at once all the 
objections made by Papists to an explicit faith, from the case of the 
Patriarch, who believed a gospel promise only vaguely stated, and of 
lis, who believe mysteries we cannot explain. Nor is it of any force 
to say, many Protestants could not give an intelligent view of any one 
sufficient argument for a given point in their creed. We grant that 
many professed Protestants have only a spurious faith. Again : an 
humble mind cannot always state in language intelligently, what he 
understands intelligently. 

Affirmative Arguments. — For an explicit faith thus defined, we 
argue: 1. That it is the only sort possible, according to the laws of 
the mind. A man cannot believe, except by seeing evidence. As well 
talk of perception of objects of sight occurring in one, without using 
one's own eyes. But, say Papists : the Catholic's implicit faith is not 
thus totally blind ; but rests on the testimony of the Church. His mind, 
influenced by agape, has intelligently embraced this as plenary and 
infallible. Now, may not a man have a conviction in such case, im- 
plicit even of unknown propositions? e. g., you Protestants have your 
authoritative rule of faith, your Scripture. Once adopt this, and you 
accept unknown contents as true; of which there are, to you some, 
until your study of Scripture exegesis is exhaustive. Ans., Very true. 
But the Romanist has no right to resort to this case as a parallel ; be- 
cause he does not permit private judgment to exercise itself in ration- 
ally weighing the proofs of the Church's authority, any more than of 
the Bible's authority. He cannot; because then, the individual must 
exercise his private judgment upon the Scripture ; the argument for the 
Church's authority being dependent thereon, in essential branches. 
2. The Bible agrees to this, by directing us to read and understand in 
order to believe, to search the Scriptures. See Jno. v : 39 ; Rom. x: 
17; Ps. cxix : 34; Prov. xvi : 22; Acts xxviii : 27; Jno. xvii ; 3; 1 
Cor. xi: 29 ; Jno. vi: 45. 3. We are commanded to be "able to give 
to every man that asketh of us, a reason of the hope that is in us." 1 
Pet. iii : 15. And faith is everywhere spoken of as an intelligent 
exescise ; while religious ignorance is rebuked as sin. 

IV. Is faith simple or complex 1 — But we now approach an inquiry 
concerning faith, on which our own divines are more divided. Is faith 
a perfectly simple exercise of the soul, by its single faculty of intel- 
lect ; or is it a complex act of both intellect and active moral powers, 
when stripped of all antecedent or consequent elements, which do not 
properly belong to it 1 The older divines, with the Confession, evidently 
make it a complex act of soul, consisting of an intellectual, and a vol- 
untary element. Turrettin, indeed, discriminates seven elements in 
the direct and reflex actings of faith: 1. Cognition; 2. Intellectual 
assent; 3. Trust; 4. Fleeing for refuge; 5. Embracing; and (reflex) 
6. Self-conssiousncus of true actings of faith, with 7. Consolation and 
assurance of hope. The two latter should rather be named the ulte- 
rior consequences of saving faith, than a substansive part thereof. 
The first is rather a previous condition of faith, and the third, fourth, 
and fifth seem to me either identical, or at most phases of the different 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 109 

actings of the will towards gospel truth. Of the old, established defi- 
nition, I have seen no sounder exponent than A. Fuller. Now, Drs. A. 
Alexander and Chalmers, among others, teach that saving faith is noth- 
ing but a simple belief of propositions ; and they seem to regard it as 
necessary to suppose the act as capable of being analysed into a per- 
fectly simple one, because it is every where spoken of in Scripture as a 
single one. Dr. Alexander also argues, with great acuteness and 
beauty of analysis, that since the soul is an absolute unit always, and 
its faculties are not departments of it, but only different modes it has 
of acting, the enlightening of the mind in regeneration and the moral 
renovation of will must be one simple act of the Holy Ghost and one 
effect, not two. And hence, there is no ground to suppose that faith, 
which is the first characteristic acting of the new born, and result of 
new birth, is complex. Moreover, he argues, since the will always fol- 
lows the latest dictate of the understanding, it is unnecessary to attri- 
bute to faith any other character than a conviction of truth in the 
intellect, to explain its practical effects m turning the soul from sin to 
Christ. 

The question to be settled by Scripture. — Now, in examining 
this subject, let us remember that the resort must be to the Bible 
alone, to learn what it means by Pistis. And this Bible was not 
written for metaphysicians, but for the popular mind; and its state- 
ments about exercises of the soul are not intended to be analytical, 
but practical. This being admitted, and Dr. Alexander's definition of 
the soul and its faculties being adopted as evidently the true one, it 
appears to me the fact, that the Scriptures every where enjoin faith as 
a single act of the soul (by the doing of which one exercise, without 
any other, the soul is brought into Christ) does not at all prove it may 
not be a complex act, performed by the soul through two of its modes 
of action. Dr. Chalmers, Dr. Alexander, and every other divine often 
speak of acts as single, which they yet would analyse into two ele- 
ments, and those not of the same faculties ; e. g., the exercise of re- 
pentance or moral approval by the soul, consisting (in some order) of 
a judgment and an emotion. 

The heart guides the head in moral choice. — In explaining the 
defect of the other argument of Dr. Alexander, I would remind the 
student of the distinctions made in defending the doctrine of the im- 
mediate agency of the Spirit in regeneration. True, the regenera- 
ting touch which enlightens the understanding and renews the will, is 
one, and not two separate or successive exertions of power. True, the 
will does follow the last dictate of the understanding, on all subjects. 
But let us go one step farther back: How comes the understanding by 
its notions, in those cases where the subjects thereof are the objects of 
its natural active propensities ? As we showed, in all these cases, the 
notion or opinion of the understanding is but the echo, and the result 
of the taste or preference of the propensity. Therefore, the change 
of opinion can only be brought about by changing the taste or preference. 
Now, inasmuch as all the leading gospel truths are objects of native 
and immediate moral propensity, the renovation of those propensities 
procures the enlightening of the understanding, rather than the con 
trary. So in faith, the distinctive exercise of the renewed soul (re 



110 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

newed as a soul, and not only as one faculty theaeof,) it is more correct 
to regard the element of active moral propensity (now towards Christ 
and away from sin) as source, and the new state of opinion concerning 
gospel truth, as result. But now, the understanding apprehends these 
objects of natural moral propensity according to truth, because of the 
correct actings of the propensity towards them ; and according to the 
soul's customary law, this apprehension according to truth, is followed 
by right volitions: the first of which, the embracing of Christ for sal- 
vation, is in the Bible — practical account of faith, included as a part 
of the complete act. If that which the Bible represents as a single, 
may yet be a complex act of the soul, exerting itself in two capacities, 
(which I have proved,) then it is no argument to say the embracing of 
Christ by the will is no part of saving faith proper, but only a conse- 
quence ; because it is a natural consequence of the law that the will 
follows the last dictate of the mind. Grant it. Yet why may not that 
very act of will, thus produced, be the very thing the Bible means by 
saving faith? (According to the Confession.) Then, to settle this, 
let us resort to the Bible itself. Be it remembered that, having dis- 
tinguished the two elements of belief and embracing, it is simply a 
question ot fact, whether the Scriptures mean to include the latter as 
a part of that exercise, by which the sinner is justified; or a result of 
it. Then, 

The object of Faith not an Opinion, but a Good. — 1. The very 
object proposed to faith implies that it must be an act as well as a 
notion ; for that object is not merely truth, but good, both natural and 
moral good. We often determine the character of the soul's actings 
by that of their object. Now, the exercise provoked or occasioned by 
an object of appetency, must be active. Here, we may remark, there 
is strong evidence for our view in this, that the Scriptures often speak 
of faith as trust. See Ps. ii : -12 ; xvii : 7 ; et passim ; Matt, xii : 21 ; 
Eph. i: 12, &c. Chalmers most strangely remarks, that still faith does 
not seem to be anything more than simple belief; because when we 
analyse trust in a promise, we find it to consist of belief in a proposi- 
tion followed by appetency for the good propounded ; and the belief 
is but belief. I reply, yes; but the trust is not mere belief only. 
Our argument is in the fact that the Scriptures say faith is trust, and 
trust is faith. Chalmers is a strangely bald sophism 1 

Faith always active in Scripture. — 2. The Scriptures describe 
faith by almost every imaginable active figure. It is a " looking," (Is. 
xlv; 22,) a "receiving," (Jno; i: 12, 13,) an "eating" of Him, (Jno. 
vi : 54,) a "coming," (Jno. v: 40,) an "embracing," (Heb. xi: 13,) a 
" fleeing unto, and laying hold of," (Heb. vi : 18,) &c. Here it may 
be added, that every one of the illustrations of faith in Heb. xi (whose 
first verse some quote as against me) come up to the Apostle's descrip- 
tion in the 13th verse, containing an active element of trust and choice, 
as well as the mental one of belief. 

,, 3. The manner in which faith and repentance are coupled together 
in Scripture plainly shows that, as faith is implicitly present in repent- 
ance, so repentance is implicitly in faith. But if so, this gives to faith 
an active oharacter. Mark i : 15; Matt, xxi : 32 ; 2 Tim. ii : 25. 

Unbelief a sin. — 4. The Scriptures represent faith, not only as a 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. Ill 

privilege, but a duty, and unbelief as a sin. 1 Jno. iii : 23; Jno. xvi: 
9. Now, it seems clear that nothing is a sin, in which there is no vol- 
untary element. The mere notion of the understanding arises upon 
the sight of evidence involuntary: and there is no moral desert or ill- 
desert about it, anymore than in being hurt when hit. And the reason 
why we are responsible for our belief on moral subjects is, that there 
is always an active, or voluntary element, about such belief. The 
nature thereof is explained by what has been said above on the order 
of causation between our disposition or propensities, and our opinions 
concerning their objects. 

Historical Faith differs how? — 5. If we make faith nothing but 
simple belief, we are unable to give a satisfactory account of the dif- 
ference between historical and saving faith. Chalmers, in the sum- 
mary of his 6th chapter, as good as acknowledges this. But surely 
that must be a defective theory, which makes it impossible to see a 
difference where yet, it admits, a substantial difference exists ! Some 
would get out of the difficulty by denying that, in strictness of speech, 
there is any historical faith where there is not saving faith — i. e., by 
denying that such persons truly believe, even with the understanding. 
Many candid sinners will declare that their consciousness contradicts 
this. Says Dr. Alexander, the historical faith does not differ in that 
it believes different propositions; but in that it believes them with a 
different and inferior grasp of conviction. I would ask, first, whether 
this statement does not give countenance to that radical Arminian 
error, which makes saving differ from temporary faith, only in degree, 
and not in kind? And I would remark, next: This is a singular de- 
sertion of a part of the strength of his own position, (although we 
believe that position includes only a part of the truth.) 

It does not accept the same propositions. — It is certainly true 
that historical faith does not believe all the propositions embraced by 
saving faith, nor the most important of them. Cat. que. 86. It be- 
lieves, in a sense, that Christ is a Saviour, &c, but does it believe that 
all its best works are sins; that it is a helpless captive to ungodliness; 
that sin is, at this time, a thing utterly undesirable in itself for that 
person; and that it is, at this moment, a thing altogether to be pre- 
ferred, to be subdued unto holiness and obedience in Jesus Christ. No 
indeed: the true creed of historical faith is: that "I am a great sin- 
ner, but not utter; that I shall initiate a rebellion against ungodliness 
successfully some day, when the 'convenient season' comes, and I get 
my own consent. That the Christian's impunity and inheritance will 
be a capital thing, when I come to die ; but that at present, some form 
of sin and worldliness is the sweeter, and the Christian's peculiar sanc- 
tity, the more repulsive thing for me." Now, the only way to revolu- 
tionize these opinions, is to revolutionize the active, spiritual tastes, of 
whose verdicts they are the echo — to produce, in a word, spiritual tastes 
equally active in the opposite direction. We have thus shown that 
historical faith does not embrace the same propositions as saving; and 
that the difference is not merely one of stronger mental conviction. 
But we have shown that the difference is one of contrasted moral ac- 
tivities, dictating opposite opinions as to present spiritual good ; and 
thus procuring action of the will to embrace that good in Christ. See. 
also, 2 Thes. ii: 10; Rom. x: 9 and 10. 



112 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Faith the fruit of regeneration. — It is very clear, that if this 
account of faith is correct, it can only be an exercise of a regenerate 
heart. The moral affections which dictate the opinions as to moral 
good and evil, according to truth, and thus procure action, are spiritual 
affections.. To this agree the Scriptures. See Rom. viii : 7; 1 Cor. 
ii: 14; Eph. i: 19,20; ii : 8 ; Ezek. xxxvi : 26,27. To this repre- 
sentation there are three objections urged; 

Objections. — 1. " That of the Sandemanian, that by giving faith 
an active and holy character, we virtually bring back justification by 
human merit." 

2. "That by supposing regeneration (the very git of redemption) 
bestowed on the sinner before justification, we make God reconciled to 
him before He is reconciled." 

3. " That we tell the sinner to go to Christ by faith in order to be 
made holy, while yet he must be made holy in order to go." Ans. 

Answers. — The answer to the 1st, is that we define faith as a holy 
exercise of the soul ; but we do not attribute its instrumentality to 
justify, to its holiness, but to the fact that it embraces Christ's justify- 
ing righteousness. Scholastice ; Fides sancta est; sed fides non justifi- 
cat qua talis, sed qua receptiva. 

To the 2d, it owes its whole plausibility to assuming that we make a 
difference in the order of time between regeneration and justification 
by faith. But we do not. In this sense, the sinner is justified when 
he is regenerated, and regenerated when justified. Again, God has 
purposes of mercy towards His elect considered as unregenerate. For 
were they not elected as such? In the Covenant of Redemption, 
Christ's vicarious engagement for them did not persuade the Father to 
be merciful to them. On the contrary, it only enabled His original 
mercy, from which the gift of Christ Himself proceeded, to go forth 
compatibly with His holiness. Hence, at the application of Redemp- 
tion, God justifies in the righteousness of Another, in order that He 
may consistently bless, with regeneration and all other graces, and He 
regenerates in order that the sinner may be enabled to embrace that 
righteousness. In time they are simultaneous; in source, both are 
gracious; but in the order of production, the sinner is enabled to be- 
lieve by being. regenerated, not vice versa. 

Sinner dependent on Grace. — To the 3d, I reply, that this is but 
to re-affirm the sinner's inability ; which is real, and is not God's fault, 
but His own. True ; iu the essential revolution from death to life, 
and curse to blessing, the sinner is dependent on Sovereign grace ; (it 
is the. virulence of sin that makes him so ;) and there is no use in try- 
ing to blink the fact. It is every way best for the sinner to find it 
out: for thus the thoroughness of legal conviction is completed, and 
self-dependence is slain. Let not the guide of souls try to palliate 
the inexorable fact, by telling him that he cannot regenerate himself 
and so adapt himself to believe ; but that he can use means, &c, &c. 
For if the awakened siuner is perspicacious, he will answer, (logically,) 
"Yes; and all my using means and instrumentalities, you tell me, will 
be adding sin to sin ; for I shall use them with wholly carnal motives." 
If not perspicacious, he will thrust these means between himself and 
Christ ; and be in imminent risk of damnation by endeavouring to 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 113 

make a Saviour out of them. No ; let the preacher still only repeat, 
Acts xvi : 31, while he does not retract Eph. ii : 4-8. Illustrate by 
Matt, xii: 10-13. If the sinner recalcitrate against the gospel para- 
dox, the triumphant answer will be : that the root of the reason why 
he cannot embrace Christ in his own strength, is, that his own sponta- 
neous preference is for self-will and ungodliness. So that if he fails 
in coming to Christ, why does he whine and grumble 1 He has followed 
precisely his own secret preference, in staying away. If the minister 
feels responsible and anxious for the successful issue of the case en- 
trusted thus to his tuition, let him remember : a) That after all, it is 
sovereign grace that must regenerate, and not the separate efficiency of 
any views of truth, however correct ; aud that he is not responsible to 
God for persuading the sinner to Christ, which is God's own work ; and 
b.) That God does in fact make the "sinner's extremity his own oppor- 
tunity ;" and where we see Him thus slaying carnal self by this tho- 
rough law- work, it is because He intends thereby to prepare the way for 
His sovereign regenerating work. Let not the minister, therefore, be- 
come disbelieving, and resort to foolish, carnal expedients ; let him 
simply repeat the gospel condition ; and then " stand still and see the 
salvation of G-od " 

V. Fides formata. distinction. — Rome teaches that historical faith 
is the substance of saving; {fides informis ;) which becames true faith 
by receiving its form, love. (Thus fides formata.) Her doctrine of 
Justification is accordant, viz : a change of moral, as well as legal 
state, consisting not only in pardon and acceptance of person, but in 
the inworking of holy love in the character. Now, in this error, as in 
most michievous ones, we find a certain perverted element of truth, 
(without which errors would not usually have life enough to be current.) 
For faith, as an act of the soul, has moral character ; and that charac- 
ter, holy. But the sophism of Rome is two-fold : a.) Heroes informis, 
or historical faith, is not generically the same act of the soul at all as 
saving faith ; being an embracing of different propositions, or at least, 
of far different apprehesions of the gospel propositions, being the acts 
of different faculties of the soul ; (historical faith characteristically of 
the head ; saving faith essentially of the heart. Rom. x 10;) and 
being prompted by different motives, so far as the former has motive. 
For the former is prompted by self-love, the latt;r by love of holiness 
and hatred of -sin. b.) Faith does not justify in virtue of its Tight- 
ness, but in virtue of its receptivity. Whatever right moral quality 
it has, has no relevancy whatever to be, of itself, a justifying right- 
eousness ; and is excluded from the justifying instrumentality of faith; 
Rom. iv: 4,5; xi : 6. But faith justifies by its instrumentality of 
laying hold of Christ's righteousness, in which aspect it does not con- 
tribute, but receives, the moral merit. 

The solution of Rome's favourite proof-texts is easy ; e. g., in 1 
Cor. xiii: 2, the faith is that of miracles. In Gal. v; 6, faith is the 
instrument energizing love, and not vice versa. In Jas. ii : 26, works 
(loving ones, of course,) are not the causes, but after-signs of faith's 
vitality, as breath is of the body's. 1 Cor. vi ; 11; Titus iii : 5 ; Eph. i : 
13; Luc. xv: 22, &c, refer to the sanctification following upon jus- 
tification. 

VI. Assurance distinguished. — By assurance of faith, we mean 



114 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the certain and undoubting conviction that Christ is all He professes 
to be, and will do all He promises. It is of the essence of saving 
faith, as all agree. See Heb. x: 22; xi : 6; Jas. i: 6, 7 ; 1 Tim. ii : 
8 ; Jer. xxixl3. And it is evident that nothing less than full convic- 
tion of the trustworthiness of the gospel would give ground to that 
entire trust, or evoke the hearty pursuit of Christ, which are requisite for 
salvation. The assurance of hope is the assured conviction (with the 
peace and joy proceeding therefrom) that the individual believer has 
had his sins pardoned, and his soul saved. Rome stoutly denies that 
this is a part of faith, or a legitimate reflex act, or consequence thereof, 
(except in the case of revealed assurance.) Her motive is, to retain 
anxious souls under the clutch ef her priest-craft and tyranny. The 
Reformers generally seem to have been driven by their hatred of this 
odious doctrine, to the other extreme, and make assurance of hope of 
the essence of faith. Thus, Calvin says ; My faith is a divine and 
spiritual belief that God has pardoned and accepted we." The sober 
view of the moderns (see Conf., ch. 18) is, that this assurance is the 
natural and proper reflex act, or consequence of true faith, and should 
usually follow, through self-examination and experience ; but that is 
not the essence of faith. 1st. Because, then, another proposition would 
be the object of faith. Not whosoever believeth shall be saved; but 
"Jam saved." The latter is a deduction, in which the former is major 
premiss. 2d. The humble and modest soul would be inextricably em- 
barrassed in coming to Christ. It would say: " I must believe that 
I am saved, in order to be saved. But I feel myself a lost sinner, in 
need of salvation. 3d. God could not justly punish the non-elect for 
not believing what would not have been true if they had believed it. 
4th. The experience of God's people in all ages contradicts it. Ps. 
lxxiii : 13; xxxi: 22; lxxvii : 2,9,10. 5th. The command to go on 
to the attainment of assurance, as a higher grace, addressed to be- 
lievers, shows that a true believer may lack it. 

VII. Faith suitable organ of justification. — God has chosen 
faith for the peculiar, organic function of instrumentally uniting the 
soul to Christ, so as to partake of His righteousness and spiritual life. 
Why? This question should be answered with modesty. One reason, 
we may suppose, is, that human glorying may be extinguished by at- 
taching man's whole salvation to an act of the soul, whose instrumental 
aspect is merely receptive, and has no procuring righteousness what- 
ever. Rom. iii : 27. Another reason is, that belief is, throughout 
all the acts of the soul, the preliminary and condition of acting. Eveiy 
thing man does is because he believes something. Faith, in its widest 
sense, is the mainspring of man's whole activity. Every volition arises 
from a belief, and none can arise without it. Hence, in selecting faith, 
instead of some other gracious exercise, which may be the fruit of re- 
generation, as the organic instrument of justification, God has pro- 
ceeded on a profound knowledge of man's nature, and in strict con- 
formity thereto. A third reason may perhaps be found in the fact 
that faith works by love : that it purifies the soul ; and is the victory 
which overcomes worldliness. See Confession of Faith, ch. xiv, § ii, 
especially its first propositions. Since faith is the principle of sanc- 
tification, in a sinner's heart, it was eminently worthy of a God of 
holiness, to select it as a term of justification. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 115 

LECTURE L. 



SYLLABUS. 
UNION TO CHRIST. 

1. By what similitudes is the union of Christ with His people set forth in the 
Scripture ? 

2. What are the several results to believers, of this union ? 

3. What is the essential, and what the instrumental bond of this union ? 

4. Show the resemblances and differences between this union and that of the 
Father and the Son , between this and that of Christ's divinity and humanity ; 
between this and that of a leader and his followers? 

5. Does this union imply a literal conjunction of the substance of Christ with 
that of the believer's soul ? 

6. How does the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in this union, differ from that 
by which it is everywhere present ? 

7. Is this union indissolmble ? 

See on whole, Dick, Lect. 67. Ridgeley, vol. iii, que. 66. Calvin's Inst., 
Bk. iii, ch. 1. Hill, Bk. v, ch. 5, § 1. Conf. of Faith, ch. 26. 

I. Union to Christ effectuates salvation. — It is through this 
union to Christ that the whole application of redemption is effectuated 
on the sinner's soul. Although all the fullness of the Godhead dwell- 
eth bodily in Him since His glorification, yet until the union of Christ 
is effected, the believer partakes of none of its completeness. When 
made one with His Redeeming Head, then all the communicable graces 
of that Head begin to transfer themselves to Him. Thus we find that 
each kind of benefit which makes up redemption is, in different parts 
of the Scripture, deduced from this union as their source ; justification, 
spiritual strength, life, resurrection of the body, good works, prayer 
and praise, sanctification, perseverance, &c, &c. Eph. i: 4, 66, 11, 13; 
Col. i ; 24 ; Rom. vi : 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 ; Col. ii : 10 ; Gal. ii : 20 ; Phil, iii : 
9; Jno. xv : 1-5. 

Described by images. — The nature of this union is to be deduced 
from a full comparison of all the similitudes by which the Word il- 
lustrates it. In one place it is described by the union of a vine with 
its branches ; and in another, of the stock of an olive tree with its 
limbs. Jno. xv ; 1-5; Rom. xi : 16-24. The stock is Christ, diffus- 
ing life and fructifying sap through all the branches. Second : Our 
Saviour briefly likens this union to that between Himself and His 
Father. Jno. xvii : 20, 21. Grace will bring the whole body of the 
elect into a sweet accord with Christ and each other, and harmony of 
interest and volition, bearing some small relation to that of the Father 
and the Son. Third: We find the union compared by Paul to that 
between the head and the members in the body ; the head, Christ, 
being the seat and source of vitality and volition, as well as of sense 
and intelligence; the members being united to it by a common set of 
nerves, and community of feeling, and life, and motion. Eph. iv : 15, 
16. Fourth : We find the union likened to that between husband and 
wife : where by the indissoluble and sacred tie, they are constituted 
one legal person, the husband being the ruler, but both united by a. 



116 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

tender affection and complete community of interest. Eph. v : 31, 32 • 
Ps. xlv: 9. Fifth: It is illustrated by the union of the stones in a 
house to their foundation corner-stone, where the latter sustains all 
the rest, and they are cemented to it and to each other, forming one 
whole. But stones are inanimate ; and therefore the sacred writer 
indicates that the simile is, in its nature, inadequate to express the 
whole truth, by describing the corner-stone as a living thing, and t&e 
other stones as living things together compsoing a spiritual temple. 
See 1 Cor. iii : 11-16; 1 Pet. ii : 4-6. 

Now, these are all professed similes or metaphors ; yet they must 
indicate, when reduced to literal language, an exceedingly close and 
important union. It is hard to see how human language could be more 
completely exhausted, to express this idea, without running it into 
identity of substance or person. Its nature may be best unfolded by 
looking successively at its results, conditions, &c. Let it be again 
noted, that our union to Christ bears to all the several benefits which 
effectuate our redemption, the relation of whole to its parts. 

II. Why called Mystical? Three results. — The results of this 
union may be said to be threefold ; or, in different language, it may be 
said that the union exists in three forms. 1st. A Legal union, in vir- 
tue of which Christ's righteousneas is made ours, and we "are ac- 
cepted in the beloved." See Rom. viii : 1; Phil, iii : 9. This is 
justification. 2d. A Spiritual, or mystical union, by which we parti- 
cipate in spiritual influences and qualities of our Head, Jesus Christ; 
and have wrought in us, by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, which 
was given to Him without measure, spiritual life, with all its resultant 
qualities and actings. See Jno. v: 25,26; xv : 2-5; Eph. ii : 5 ; 
Rom. vi : 1 1 ; 2 Cor. v : 1 7 ; Gal. ii : 20. This union the orthodox divines 
have called mystical^ (mystika,) borrowing the expression, most likely, 
from Eph. v: 32. They did not mean thereby, that in their views of 
this union spiritual, they adopted the views held by the ancient and 
mediaeval Mystics, who taught an essential oneness of the human in- 
telligence with the substance of the Logos, to be developed by quiet- 
ism and ascetism. Orthodox divines have rather meant thereby, what 
is the proper, scriptural idea of the word mysterion, (rauo,) some- 
thing hidden and secret; not something incomprehensible and in- 
capable of being intelligibly stated. The spiritual union is indeed 
mysterious in that sense ; but not otherwise than regeneration is mys- 
terious. The incomprehensible feature is not only similar, but identi- 
cal ; it is one and the same mystery. But the tie is called mystical, 
because it is invisible to human eyes; it is not identical with that out- 
ward or professed union, instituted by the sacraments ; it is a secret 
kept between the soul and its Redeemer, save as it is manifested by its 
fruits. The third result of the union, is the communiou of saints. 
As the stones of the wall, overlapping the corner-stone, also overlap 
each other, and are cemented all into one mess; so, every soul that is 
united truly te Christ, is united to his brethren. Hence, follows an 
identity of spirit and principle, a community of aimes, and a oneness 
of affection and sympathy. 

III. Its instumental and essential bond. — The essential bond of 
of this union is the indwelling of influence of the Holy Ghost. This 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 117 

Spirit is indeed immense and omnipresent; nor is His providential 
agency dead or inoperative in any creature of God. But in the souls 
of believers, He puts forth a different agency, viz., the same whieh He 
exerts in the man, Jesus Christ, by which He fills Him with all the 
fullness of the Godhead. Tlius the bond of union is formed. The 
vegetative influences of the sun are on the whole surface of the earth . 
In many plants those influences produce a growth, wild or useless, or 
noxious; but in every cultivated field, they exhibit themselves in the 
vegetation of the sweet and wholsome corn which is planted there. 
In proof of this bond, see 1 Cor. iii ; 16 ; vi : 17 ; xii : 13 ; 1 Jno. iii : 
24: iv : 13. To return to the Bible figure of a vine or tree, the sap 
which is in the branches was first in the stock; and proceeded thence 
to the branches. It has in them the same chemical and vital charac- 
ters; and produces every where the same fruit. The sense and feeling 
of every limb are the common sense and feeling of the head. Hence, 
we are entitled to take this pleasing view of all genuine spiritual af- 
fections in the members of Christ, each one is in its hnmble measure, the 
counterpart of similar spiritual affections in Christ. There are indeed 
some affections ; e. g., those of penitence, which Christ cannot explicitly 
share, because He is sinless; but even here the tide of holy affection, 
of enmity to all moral impurity, and love for holiness, wells from the 
Saviour's bosom ; in passing through the believer's sinful bosom it as- 
sumes the form of penitence, because modified by his personal sense 
of sin. Each gracious affection is a feeble reflex of the same affection, 
existing, in its glorious perfection, in our Redeemer's heart. As when 
we see a mimic sun in the pool of water on the earth's surface, we 
know that it is only there, because the sun shineth in his strength 
in the heavens. How inexpressible the comfort and encouragement 
arising from this identity of affection and principle ! Especially is it 
consoling in the assurance which it give us of the answer to all our 
prayers which are conceived in the Holy Ghost. Does the believer 
have, for instance, a genuine and spiritual aspiration for the growth of 
Zion? Let him take courage, that desire was only born in his breast 
because it before existed in the breast of his Head, that Mediator 
whom the Father heareth always. 

The instrumental bond of the union is evidently faith — i. e., when 
the believer exercises faith, the union begins; and by the exercise of 
faith it is ou his part perpetuated, See Eph. iii ; 17 ; Jno. xiv : 23 ; 
Gal. iii; 26,27,28. First: God embraces us with His electing and 
renewing love ; and we then embrace Him by the actings of our faith, 
so that the union is consummated on both sides. One of the results, 
or, if you please, forms, of the union is justification. Of this, faith 
is the instrument; for Christ "purifies our hearts by faith." 

IV. The Union illustrated. — Christ compares the spiritual union 
of His people, to ^Himself, with tnat of Himself to His Father. The 
resemblance must be in the community of graces, of affections, and of 
volitions; and not in the identity of substance and nature. Our con- 
ciousness assures us that our personality and separate free-agency are 
as complete after as before the union ; and that our being is no how 
merged in the substance of Christ. To this agree all the texts which 
address the believer as still a separate person, a responsible free agent, 



118 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

and a man, not a G-od. The idea of a personal or substantial union 
would imply the deification of man, which is profane and unmeaning. 
But when we consider Christ's relation as Mediatorial person (and not 
merely as Logos) to God the Father, we have a more apt representa- 
tion of His union to His people. For this union is maintained by a 
spiritual indwelling in Him. The union between Christ's divinity and 
humanity, as conceived by the Nestorians, (see Lecture xxxvii of Part 
ii,) would afford also a more apt representation of the believer's union. 
The Nestonians represented it as a synaphcia, not a henosis, and 
expressly asserted it to be generically the same, with, and only higher 
in degree than, the mystical union of the Godhead with believers. 
But then they were understood as making of Christ two Persons. We 
who hold with the Council of Ephesus cannot use the union of the two 
natures of the person of Christ, to illustrate the believer's union to 
Him ; because we have shown that it does not result in a proper one- 
ness of person. The Church with its Head is only a spiritual corpora- 
tion, and not a literal person. 

Not that op mere Leader. — But on the other hand, to represent 
Christ's union as only that of a mere Leader and His followers, a union 
of sentiment, interests and affections, would be entirely too feeble. In 
the case of the Leader admired and devotedly followed, there is only 
an emission of moral suasion and example, producing these results. In 
the case of Christ and His people, there is far more : there is the emis- 
sion of a Divine and vital Substance, the Holy Ghost, who literally 
unites Christ and His people, by dwelling and operating identically 
(though far different in degree) in both ; and who establishes and 
maintains in the creature, by supernatural power, the same peculiar 
condition, called spiritual life, which exists in the Head. In a word, 
there is truly a sap, a cement, which unites the two, that is a thing, 
and not mere an influence, a divine, living, and Almighty Thing, viz., 
Holy Ghost. 

V. Not a partaking of the Substance of the Godhead. — Yet, 
while we thus assert a proper and true indwelling of the Holy Ghost 
with the believer's soul, (and thus mediately of the soul and Christ,) 
we see nothing in the Bible to warrant the belief of a literal conjunc- 
tion of the substance of the Godhead in Christ, with the substance of 
the believer's soul ; much less of a literal local conjunction of the 
whole mediatorial person, including the humanity, with the soul. 
" Christ does dwell in our hearts by faith." "It is He that livethin 
us;" but it is in a multitude of other places explained to mean the 
indwelling of His Holy Ghost. 

Determines our view of Lord's Supperi' — Now, I cannot but be- 
lieve that the gross and extreme views of a real presence and opus 
operatum, in the Lord's supper, which prevailed in the Church from 
the patristic ages throughout the mediaeval, and which infect the 
minds of many Protestants now, arise from an erroneous and over- 
strained view of the mystical union. This union effectuates redemp- 
tion. We all agree that the sacraments are its signs and seals. (See 
1 Cor. xii : 13; 1 Cor. x: 17, et passim.) Now, the Fathers seem to 
have imagined that spiritual life must result from a literal and sub- 
stantive intromission of Christ's person into our souls, just as corporeal 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 119 

nutrition can only result when the food is taken substantially into the 
stomach, and assimilated with our corporeal substance. la this sense 
they seem to have understood the eating of Jno. vi : 51, &c, (which 
was currently misapplied to the Lord's sapper.) Hence, how natural 
that in the Lord's supper, the sacramental sign and seal of the vitaliz- 
ing union, they should imagine a real preseoce, not only of the God- 
head naturally, and of the Holy Spirit in His saactif\ing influences, 
but of the whole Mediatorial person ; and a literal feeding thereon. 
Hence, afterward, the fooleries of transubstantiation and consubstan- 
tiatioo, and the more refiod, though equally impossible theory of Cal- 
vin, of a literal, aud yet only spiritual feeding on the whole person. 
Let us disembarras our views of the mystical union; aod these un- 
scriptural perversions of the sacraments will fall away of themselves. 
We shall make them what the Word makes them — commemorative 
signs, and divioely appointed seals of covenant blessiugs ; all of which 
blessings are summed up iu our legal aod spiritual union to Jesus 
Christ; and this union coustituted solely by the blessed aod ineffable 
indwelliog of Christ's Holy Spirit iu our souls, as a priociple of faith 
and sanctificutioa. There is, then, no other feeding on Christ's person 
but the actings of the soul's faith respousive to the vital motion of the 
Holy Ghost, embracing the benefits of Christ's redeemiog work. 

VI. The Union indissoluble. — To one who apprehends the dignity 
and intimacy of this uuion aright, there will appear a stroog a priori 
probability that it will be indissoluble. The efficieot parties to it are 
Christ and the Holy Ghost ; parties diviue, omniscient, immutable. 
The immediate effect on man's soul is the entraoce of superaatural 
life, and the beginning of the exercise of new and characteristic and 
spiritual acts. One would hardly expect to find that these Divine and 
Almighty Agents intended any such child's play, as the production of 
a temporary faith and grace, iu such transactions ! When we discuss 
the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, we shall find this a pri- 
ori evidence confirmed. Our purpose now is not to anticipate that 
argument; but to suggest at this place, the presumption. 



LECTURE LI. 



SYLLABUS. 
JUSTIFICATION. 

1. What is the importaDce of correct views on this doctrine ? 

Dick, Lect. 69. Turrettin, Loc. xv, que. 1. Owen on Justification, (As- 
sembly's Edit.,) p. 76-82. 



120 SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 

2. What is the scriptural idea or meaning of God's acts of justification ? State 
and refute Popish view, and establish the true view. 

Turrettin, Loc, xv, que. 1. Owen, ch. iv. Dick, Lect. 69. Hill, Bk. v. 
ch. 2. Ridgeley, que. 70. Knapp, § 109. Watson, Theo. Inst., ch. xxiii, 
§1. Bellarmine Controversia. Liber de Justifictione. Council of Trent, 
Ses. 6, ch. 7. Calvin's Inst., Bk. iii, ch. 11. 

3. Does the inherent grace wrought by God in the believer's soul or good 
works proceeding therefrom, merit anything towards justification ? 

Calvin's Inst., Bk. iii, chs. 15 and 17. Turrettin, que. 2. Owen, ch. v. 
Conncil of Trent, Ses. 6, ch. 7 to 10, and Canons 11, &c, de Justifi. Bel. 
larmine, as above. Dr. A. Alexander, Tract on Justifiation. 

4. Is justification mere remission of sins : or does it inclnde the bestowal of 
a title to favour and reward ? And is Christ's active, as well as His passive obe- 
dience, imputed to believers therefor ? 

Tur.ettin, que. iv. Owen, ch. xii. Dick, Lect. 69. Hill, as above. Knapp, 
§ 115. Watson, as above, § 2. Dr. A. Alexander, as above. 

5. What is adoption ? 

Turrettin, Loc. xvi, que. 6- Dick, Lect. 73. Ridgeley, que. 74. See on 
Avhole, Conf. of Faith, ch. 11 : and Catechisms- 

I. Its importance. — It is obvious to the first glance, that it is a 
question of the first importance to sinners. "How shall man be just 
with God]" The doctrine of justification was the radical principle, 
as we have seen, out of which grew the Reformation from Popery. It 
was by adopting this, that the Reformers were led out of darkness into 
light. Indeed, when we consider how many of the fundamental points 
of theology are connected with justification, we can hardly assign it too 
important a place. Our view of this doctrine must determine or be 
determined by our view of atonement ; and this, again, carries along 
with it the whols doctrine concerning the natures and person of Christ. 
And if the proper deity of Him be denied, that of the Holy Ghost 
will very certainly fall along with it; so that the very doctrine of the 
Trinity is destroyed by extreme views concerning justification. Again : 
"It is God that justifieth." How evident, then, that our views of jus- 
tification will involve those of God's law and moral attributes? The 
doctrine of of original sin is also brought in question, when we assert 
the impossibility of man's so keeping the law of God, as to justify 
himself. It is a more familiar remark, that the introduction of the 
true doctrine of justification excludes that whole brood of Popish in- 
ventions, purgatory and penance, works of supererogation, indulgences, 
sacrifice of the mass, and merit of congruity acquired by alms and 
mortifications. 

Justification as its Ground. — Not to go again into these subjects 
at large, which are illustrated in your history of the Reformation, it 
may be briefly repeated, that as is our conception of the meritorious 
ground of justification, such will be our conception of its nature, if 
its ground is absolute, complete and infinite, the righteousness of Jesus 
Christ, it also will be an act complete, final, and absolute, equal in all 
justified persons, admitting no increment, and neither leaving need nor 
room for any sacramental merit, or penitential atonement. Once 
more: The blessed doctrine of an assurance of hope is intimately de- 
pendent on justification. If the latter is grounded on infused grace, 
and admits of loss and increment, the Christian's opinion concerning 
the certainty of his own justification can never become an assurance, 
this aide the grave; for the very sufficient reason, that the fact itself 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 121 

is still suspended. If he were assured of it, he would believe an un- 
truth ; for the thing itself is not yet sure. Hence, the propriety of 
Luther's decision, when, taught by his personal, as well as his theologi- 
cal experience, he declared justification to be the cardinal doctrine of 
the Church's creed. 

II. Etymology of term. — The question concerning the true nature 
. of justification should be strictly one of exegesis. All are agreed that 
it is God's act. Hence, the opinions of men, or the human meanings 
of words by which men have expressed God's descriptions of it in Scrip- 
ture, are not worth one particle, in determining its nature. It may, 
however, be remarked, that all English theologians have adopted the 
Latin word justify (justifico) from the Vetus Itala, Latin Fathers and 
Latin Vulgate, an unclassical word, which would mean, etymologically, 
to make righteous. I may also remind you, that Augustine, and a few 
of the other fathers, misled by this etymology, and their ignorance of 
Greek, conceived and spoke of justification as a change of moral 
state, as well as of legal condition. Here is the poisonous germ of the 
erroneous doctrine 0/ the Scholastics and of Trent concerning it ; a 
striking illustration 'of the high necessity of Hebrew and Greek litera- 
ture, in the teachers of the Church. 

Bible terms. Romish definition. Our definition. — When we 
pass to the original Scriptures, we find the act of justification described 
by a Hebrew and a Greek verb, hitsdik, (hiphil) and dikaioo, 
with their derivatives. Now, the Romish Church asserts, that the 
Scriptural idea of the act is not only God's accounting, but also making 
the sinner righteous, by both infusing the divine righteousness, and 
declaring it acceptable, in the sinner. We believe that the true 
meaning is not to make righteous, but only to declare righteous ; and 
that the act of justification does not change the moral state, but only de- 
clares, in the forum of heaven, the legal state of the sinner. The 
soundest reasons for this, we shall give, without any claim whatever to 
originality, merely aiming to present them in a brief, lucid, and logical 
order. The Holy Ghost, then, by justification, intends a forensic act, 
and not a moral change. 

Proofs — a.) Because, in a number of cases, they express a justifi- 
cation of objects incapable of being made righteous by a moral change, 
by the justifying agents, in the given cases. Thus, Wisdom • Matt, xi : 
19. God: Ps. liv: 4; Job. xxxii : 2; Luke vii : 29. 

b.) Because, in a multitude of cases, to justify is the contrast of con- 
demning; e.g., Job ix: 20; Deut. xxv: 1; Rom. viii : 33, 34, &c. 
Now, to condemn does not change, but only declares the culprit's 
moral condition ; it merely fixes or apportions the legal consequence 
of his faults. Therefore, to justify does not make holy, but only an- 
nounces and determines the legal relation. 

c.) In some places, the act of a magistrate in justifying the wicked 
is pronounced very sinful. Prov. xvii : 15; Is. v: 23. Now, if to 
justify were to make righteous, to justify the wicked would be a most 
praiseworthy and benevolent act on the magistrate's part. From this 
very argument, indeed, some have raised a captious objection; saying, 
if it is so iniquitous in the human magistrate to pronounce righteous 
him who is personally unrighteous, it must be wrong for God to justify 



122 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

in this (Calvinistic) sense, the sinner. The answer is, that God, unlike 
the magistrate, is able to impute to the justified ungodly, a vicarious 
satisfaction for his guilt, and to accompany this justification with sanc- 
tifying grace, ensuring his future obedience. 

d.) The adjuncts of the act of justification are all such as would in- 
dicate a forensic character for it. Rom. iii; 19,20: the objects of 
the act are men who are hupodikoi. See also Job ix: 2, 3 ; Ps. exliii : 
2. There is a bar at which the act is performed. Luke xvi : 15 ; 
Rom. iv: 2; Is. xliii : 26. There is an advocate, pleading our cause. 
1 Jno. ii: 1. 

e.) Finally, the equivalent expressions all point to a forensic act. 
Thus, in Rom. iv : 4-6, justification is explained by the forgiveness of 
iniquity, and covering of sin. In Rom. v: 9, we are justified by His 
blood and saved from wrath through Him; and v: 10, it is farther ex- 
plained by reconciliation. In Jno. iii: 18; v; 24, &c, it is being not 
condemned, and passing from death to life. In a word, the only sense 
of the word which makes Paul's argument in Romans, ch. ii-v, intelli- 
ble, is the forensic sense ; for the whole question there is concerning 
the way of acquittal for a sinner before God. 

Popish objections. — Papists, therefore, admit that the original 
words often carry a forensic sense, even an exclusive one ; and that in 
the justification of the sinner the forensic idea is also present; but 
they claim that, in addition, a production of inherent righteousness in 
the justified person is intended by the word ; so that the believer is 
accounted, because made personally, righteous in justification. And in 
support of this, they quote Is. liii : 1 1 ; Dan. xii : 3, from the Old 
Testament, and in the New, Rom. iii: 24; iv : 22; vi : 4, 5 ; viii: 10, 
30; 1 Cor. vi: 11; Heb. xi : 4; Titus iii: 5-7; Rev. xxii : 11. Of 
the first two texts it is enough to say, that the forensic sense of the 
verb is perfectly tenable, when we assign only an instrumental agency 
to the gospel, or minister mentioned ; and that sort of agency the 
Papist himself is compelled to give them. Of 1 Cor. vi : 11, it should 
be said that it is a case of introverted parallelism, in which the "wash- 
ing" is general; and the sanctifying and justifying the two branches 
thereof. Can they be identical : tautological ? " Ye are sanctified by 
the Spirit of our God, and justified in the name of Christ." Rev. 
xxii: 11, only has a seeming relation to the subject, in consequence of 
the Vulgate's mistranslation from an erroneous reading. The other 
passages scarcely require notice. 

III. Protestant Definition. — The Protestant view of justification 
as to its nature, and meritorious cause may be seen in Shorter Cate- 
chism, que. 33. 

Justification according to Rome. — The doctrine of Rome is a 
masterpiece of cunning and plausible error. According to this doc- 
trine, justification is rather to be conceived of as a process, than an ab- 
solute and complete act. The imitation of this process is due to the 
gracious operation of the Holy Ghost, (bestowed first in Baptism,) 
infusing and inworking a fides formata in the soul. Free will is by 
itself inadequate for such an exercise, but yet neither doth the Holy 
Ghost produce it, without the concurrence of the contingent will of 
the believer. So that Rome's doctrine hereon is synergistic. More- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 123 

Over, the meritorious cause which purchases for the believer, this grace 
of a fides formata, is Christ's righteousness and intercession. But now, 
the agape, with resultant good works, thus inwrought by grace, is the 
righteousness which is imputed to the believer, for his complete justi- 
fication — i. e., to entitle him to life and adoption ; so that the work of 
justification not only accounts, but makes the sinner personally righteous. 
It will be seen how cunningly this doctrine, by mixing justification with 
sanctification, avails itself of the seeming support of such passages as 
Eom. iv: 22-24; x: 10 ; Acts x : 35 ; Gal. v: 6; Jas. ii : 26, how 
plausibly it evades those peculiar texts, as Rom. i: 17; Phil, iii : 9, 
which say that the righteousness which justifies us is God's ; and how 
"it keeps the word of promise to the ear, and breaks it to the sense," 
in seeming to ascribe something to the merit of Christ, while yet it is 
practically justification by works. 

Causes of justification according to Rome. — According to the 
Council of Trent then, the final cause of justification is (correctly,) 
God's glory in the bestowal of eternal life. The efficient cause, God's 
grace; the meritorious cause, the righteousness of Jesus Christ; (i. e., 
of His passion) ; the instrumental cause, baptism ; the formal cause, the 
infused righteousness of God, dwelling in the believer. Justification 
will consequently be, imperfect in all, different in degree in different 
ones, capable of increment and diminution, and liable to entire loss, 
in case of backsliding ; nor can its continuance unto glory be certainly 
ascertained by the believer, (except in case of inspiration) inasmuch as 
its continuance is not itself certain. 

Justification not by inherent grace and its works. — Now all 
sound Protestants assert, on the contrary, that there is no other justifi- 
cation than that which Romanists describe as the initiation thereof, 
which is a complete and absolute act ; done for the believer once for 
all, perfect and complete in all, needing and admitting no increment ; 
and above all, that God is not moved in any sort, to bestow this grace 
of justification by the congruous merit of our inwrought holiness ; but 
that this latter is, on the contrary, one of the fruits of our justification. 
We utterly exclude our own inherent holiness. 

Arguments. — a.) Because, however gracious, it is always imperfect. 
But the Law of God (Gal. iii : 10; Jas. ii : 10,) can accept nothing 
but a perfect righteousness. Nor is it worth the Papist's while to say, 
that the believer's holiness is perfect in habitu, but imperfect in actu. 
Imperfection of act is sure evidence of imperfection of principle ■ and 
see Matt, xii : 37. 

Evasion of Rom. iii : 20, &c. — b.) The Apostle sternly excludes 
works from the ground of justification. Rom. iii: 20, 28, &c, &c. 
And it is no adequate answer to say : he means only to exclude ceremo- 
nial works. For besides that, it is improbable the apostle would ever 
have thought it worth his while to argue against a justification by cer- 
emonial works alone, inasmuch as we have no proof any Jew of that 
day held such a theory ; we know that the Hebrew mind was not accus- 
tomed to make the distinction between ceremonial and moral, positive 
and natural precepts. Moreover, the law whose works are excluded is, 
evidently from the context, the law whose works might prompt boast- 



124 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

ing, the law which was over Jew and Gentile alike, the law which was 
the term of the Covenant of works, and from whose curse Christ deliv- 
ers us. Gal. iii : 12. 

Another Evasion. — Another evasion is attempted, by saying the 
Apostle only excludes the works of the unrenewed heart. We reply : 
Was it worth his while to argue their exclusion, when nobody was so 
impudent as to assert their value? Again, his language is general. 
He excludes all works which stand opposed to faith ; but there is as 
much contrast between working and believing after as before conversion. 
Then, the illustrations which the Apostle uses, are David and Abra- 
ham, all of whose works he excludes from their justification. Surely 
the Hebrew would not naturally refer to their good works, as those of 
an unsanctified man ! In fine, the manner in which, in Rom. vi, the 
Apostle answers the charge of "making void the law through faith," 
proves that he meant to exclude all works. 

c.) Our justification is asserted, in many forms, to be all of grace, 
to exclude boasting, to be by Christ's righteousness, as contrasted with 
ours. We assert that the freedom of grace, and the honour of Christ 
in our salvation are grievously marred by the Popish doctrine. Hu- 
man merit is foisted in. 

d.) No holy exercises, nor gracious acts, whatever their source, have 
any relevancy to atone for past guilt. But remission of this is the 
more essential (if possible) part of the justification. 

e.) When once the righteousness of Christ, which the Council of 
Trent allows to be the meritorious cause for initiating a justified state, 
is applied, we assert that the whole change of legal attitude is effected ; 
and nothing remains that can be done more. The man "is passed from 
death unto lite," and "hath eternal life." Jno. v ; 24 ; iii : 36. There 
is no condemnation to him. Bom. viii: 1. He "hath peace" with 
Grod." Bom. v: 1. He "is reconciled," v: 10, and has acquired a 
vicarious merit, which a fortiori assures all subsequent gifts of grace 
without any additional purchase. He is adopted. Jno. i : 12, In a 
word, the righteousness imputed being infinite, the justification grounded 
on it is at once complete, if it exists at all. 

f.) The Popish idea that justification can be matured and carried on 
by inherent grace is inconsistent with God's nature and law. Suppose 
the believer re-instated in acceptance, and left to continue and 
complete it by his imperfect graces: why should not his first short- 
coming hurl him down into a state of condemnation and spiritual 
death, just as Adam's first did him 1 Then his justification would have 
to be initiated over again. The only thing which prevents this, is the 
perpetual presentation of Christ's merit on the believer's behalf. So 
that there is no room for the operation of inherent grace. 

IV. Justification is both pardon and adoption. — The Catechism 
defines justification as a pardoning of all our sins, and an acceptance of 
us as righteous in God's sight. It is more than remission, bestowing 
also a title to Cod's favour, and adoption to that grace and glory which 
would have been won had we perfectly kept the Covenant of Works. 
On the contrary, the Arminian declares justification to be nothing but 
simple forgiveness, asserting that, as absence of life is death, cessation 
of motion is rest, so absence of guilt is justification. The Scriptural 






OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 125 

ground on which they rely is that class of passages represented hy Rom. 
iv: 4-8, where Paul defines, for instance, justification as that pardon 
of iniquities and covering of sin which David sung in Ps. xxxii. See 
also Acts v : 3l; Eph. i ■ 7; Rom. v: 16, &c. We reply: We admit 
that forgiveness is the first element, and a very important element of 
justification ; and that wherever bestowed, it always infallibly draws 
after it the whole act and grace. In passages where it was not the im- 
mediate scope of the sacred writer, therefore, to define the whole ex- 
tent of justification, what more natural than that it should be denomi- 
nated by this characteristic element, in which a guilty conscience will 
naturally feel itself more immediately interested ? Surely, if in other 
places we find the act described as containing more, we should com- 
plete our definition of it by taking in all the elements which are em- 
braced in all the places. We argue, then : 

a.) That the use of the words and their meaning would indicate that 
remission is not the whole idea of justification. Surely, to declare 
righteous is another thing than a mere declaration of exemption from 
penalty, even as righteousness is another state than that of mere ex- 
emption from suffering. This leads us to remark, 

Righteousness more than guiltlessness. — b.) That the law con- 
tains a two-fold sanction. If its terms be perfectly kept, the reward 
will be eternal life ; if they be broken in any respect, the punishment 
will be death. Pardon alone would release from the punishment of its 
breach, but would not entitle to the reward of its performance. In 
other words, he who broke it, and has suffered the penalty, therefore, 
does not stand on the same platform with him who has kept it. Sup- 
pose, for instance, I promise to my servants a reward for keeping my 
commands, and threaten punishment for breaking them. At the end 
of the appointed time, one of them has kept them, and receives the 
reward. A second one has broken them, and is chastised. Suppose 
this second should then arise and claim his reward also, on the ground 
that suffering the full penalty of the breach was an entire equivalent 
for perfect obedience 1 Common sense would pronounce it absurd. 
Hence, the Arminian logic, that remission is justification, is seen to be 
erroneous. Since Christ steps into the sinner's stead, to fulfil in his 
place the whole Covenant of Works, He must, in order to procure to us 
full salvation, both purchase pardon for guilt, and a positive title to 
favour and life. The sinner needs both. Arminians have sometimes 
argued that the one necessarily implies the latter; because a moral 
tertum quid is inconceivable ; there is no place between heaven and 
hell, to which this person, guiltless and yet not righteous, could 
be consigned. We reply, the two elements are indeed practically in- 
separable ; but yet they are distinguishable. And, while there can be 
no moral neutrality, yet, in the sense of this argument, guiltlessness 
is not equal to righteousness; e. g., Adam, the moment he entered 
into the Covenant of Works, was guiltless, (and in one sense righteous.) 
God could not justly have visited him with infflictions, nor taken away 
from his present natural happiness. But did Adam, therefore, have a 
title to that assured eternal life, including all the blessings of perse- 
verance, infallible rectitude, and sustaining grace, which was held out 
in the Covenant, as the reward to be earned by obedience 1 Surely 



126 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

not. Now, this is what the sinner needs, to make a complete justifica- 
tion — what Christ gives therein. 

Scriptures. — c.) To this agree the Scriptures. Zech. iii : 4, 5, 
justification is not only the stripping off of the filthy garment, but tne 
putting on of the fair mitre and clean robe. Acts xxvi : 18, faith 
obtains forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among the saints. Rom. 
v: 1, 2, justification by faith brings us not only peace with God, but 
access to a state of grace, and joy and glory. G-al. iv : 5, Christ's 
coming under the curse for us, results in a redemption, which includes 
adoption. Jno. i: 12, believing is the immediate instrument of adop- 
tion, &c, &c. 

2. Christ's active obedience imputed. — Second: Those who admit 
this definition of justification, will, of course, admit that the righteous- 
ness by which the sinner is justified must include a full obedience to 
the preceptive, as well as the penal part of the law. And as that right- 
eousnes, (to anticipate a point of future discussion) is Christ's, hence, the 
merit of His obedience to the precepts, as well as of His atoning suffer- 
ings, must be imputed to us, for justification. [It is common for theo- 
logians to say : " both His active and passive obedience" are imputed. 
The phrase is clumsy. In truth, Christ's sufferings contained an active 
obedience ; and it is this which made them a righteousness : for mere 
pain, irrespective of the motive of voluntary endurance, is not merito- 
rious. And Christ's obedience to precepts was accompanied with endu- 
rance.] 

Arguments. — a.) All the arguments then, by which the last head 
was supported, also go to prove that both parts of Christ's righteousness 
are imputed for justification, (if either is.) He undertook to stand in 
our law-stead ; and do for us, what the Covenant of works demanded 
of us for our eternal life. We have seen that after we sinned, it re- 
quired an obedience penal and preceptive. 

b.) It is most scriptural to suppose that all Christ did as a mediato- 
rial person, was for us, and in our stead. Did Christ then, obey the 
preceptive law, as one of His official functions 1 The answer is, there 
was no other reason why He should do it — of which more anon. See 
Matt, iii: 15; v: 17. 

c.) In many places, Christ's bearing the preceptive law is clearly 
implied to be for our redemption. See, for instance, Gral. iv : 4. By what 
fair interpretation can it be shown that the law under which He was 
made, to redeem us, included nothing but the penal threatenings? 
" To redeem us who were under the law." Were we under no part of 
it but the threats 1 See, also, Rom. v: 18,19. "By the obedience of 
Christ, many are made righteous." The antithesis and whole context 
show that obedience to precepts is meant. Rom. viii : 3, 4. What the 
law failed to do, through our moral impotency, that Christ has done for 
us. What was that 1 Rather our obedience than our suffering. See, 
also, Heb. x : 5-7. 

Osiander's view. — In the da^s of the Reformation, Andr. Osiander 
vitiated the doctrine of justification by urging, that if Christ was under 
a moral obligation to keep the preceptive law, (as who can doubt 1) 
then He owed all the obedience of which He was capable on His own 
account, and therefore could not render it as our surety. Hence H 
supposed that the righteousness imputed to us is not that of the God- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 127 

man on earth, but the inherent or natural righteousness of the Deity. 
The Socinians and others have adopted this cavil, making it the staple 
of one of their objections to imputation. The answer is threefold. 
1st. Christ did, indeed, owe complete obedience to law, after assuming 
His vicarious task. But for what purpose was the obligation assumed? 
For what purpose was the very humanity assumed, by which He came 
under the obligation t To redeem man. The argument is, therefore, 
as preposterous as though, when a surety comes forward, and gives his 
own bond, to release his bankrupt friend, the creditor should refuse to 
cancel the bankrupt man's bond, saying to the surety : " Now, you owe 
me the money for yourself, for I hold your bond !" But second : 
Christ, as God-man, was not obliged to render any obedience to the 
law, to secure the justification of His own mediatorial person : because He 
was personally accepted and justified from the beginning. See Matt. 
iii : 17 ; Heb. i:6. For whom then, was this obedience rendered, if 
not for His people 1 And third : The obedience, though rendered in 
the human nature, was the obedience of the divine person. That person, 
as divine, could not be subject, on His own personal behalf, to law, 
being the sovereign. Hence, it must be vicarious obedience, and 
being of infinite dignity, is sufficient to justify not one believer only, 
but all. 

V. Adoption. What ? — Adoption cannot be said to be a different 
act or grace from justification. Turrettin devotes only a brief separate 
discussion to it, and introduces it in the thesis in which He proves that 
justification is both pardon and acceptance. Owen says that adoption 
is but a presentation of the blessings bestowed in justification in new 
phases and relations. And this is evidently correct ; because adoption 
performs the same act for us, in Bible representations, which justification 
does : translates us from under (rod's curse into His fatherly favour. Be- 
cause its instrument is the same . faith. Gal. iii ; 26, with iv : 6, 7 ; Titus 
iii: 7; Heb. xi: 7; Jno. i : 12. Aud because the meritorious ground 
of adoption is the same with that of justification, viz; the righteous- 
ness of Christ. See Heb. xi : 7 ; Eph. i: 6; and texts above. The 
chief doctrinal importance of this idea then is, that we have here, the 
strongest proof of the correctness of our definition of justification, and 
of the imputed righteousness upon which it is based, in the fact that 
it is both a pardon and an adoption. 

The representation of our adoption given in Scripture, with its glo- 
rious privileges, is full of consoling and encouraging practical instruc- 
tions. The student may see these well set forth in Dick's 73d Lecture. 



128 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

LECTURE LI. 



SYLLABUS. 
JUSTIFICATION. (Continued.) 

6. State the general argument, (against Moralists, Socinians, Pelagians, &c.,) 
to prove that works cannot justify. 

Turrettin, Loc. xvi, que. 2. Owen, chs. 10 and 14. Dick, Lect. 69 and 
70. Hill, Bk. v, ch. 2. Dr. A. Alexander, Tract. 

7. How then reconcile James and Paul, Rom.,ch. iii and iv ; and James, 
ch. ii ? 

Owen, ch. 20. Turrettin, que. 8. Dick, Lect. 71. Watson's Theol. Inst., 
ch. xxiii, § iv. 

8. Refute the lower Arminiau scheme : that Christ only purchased for us a 
milder law, which accepts penitence and evangelical obedience, instead of per- 
fect obedience. 

Owen, ch. 11, Dick, Lect. 70. Watson, Theol. Inst., as above, and § iii. 

9. Slate and refute the Wesleyan, (or higher Arminian theory,) that faith is 
imputed as our righteousness. 

Turrettin, que. 7, § 1-14. Owen, ch. 3. Dick, Lect. 71. Watson, Theol. 
Inst., ch. xxii, § ii. 

10. Complete, then, the argument of our 4th question, by showing what is the 
meritorious ground of justification. 

See Owen, chs. 16 and 17. Turrettin, que. 3, § 11-21. Hill, Dick, Alex- 
ander, as above. 

VI. Justification not by works. Evasions of Scripture. — The 
particular phase in which the Romish Church foists the merit of works 
into justification has been considered, in discussing its nature. But 
now that we approach the subject of its grounds, it is necessary that 
we study the general reasons for the exclusion of works, in more com- 
prehensive views. We find the Apostle, Rom. iii: 20, declaring: 
"Therefore, by the deeds of the Law, there shall no flesh be justified 
in His sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin." 

1. To this agree the views expressed by all the sacred writers of 
the Old and New Testaments. See Ps. cxxx : 3,4; lxxi : 16; cxliii : 
2; Dan. ix : 18; Jobxl: 4. These instances are peculiarly instruc- 
tive, as showing that Paul broaches no new doctrine ; and especially 
as excluding the Romish pretext, that only works of the carnal nature 
are excluded ; because the Psalmist and Job are the very men who, 
in other places, make most earnest protestations of their sincerity and 
piety. Then our Saviour teaches the same doctrine. Luke xvii : 10; 
xviii : 14. And the Epistles likewise. Eom. iii : 28; iv: 6; xi : 6; 
Gal. ii: 11 ; Eph. ii : 8, 9, &c, &c. 

Because the law convicts. — 2. Justification cannot be by the law, 
"because by the law is the knowledge of sin." That law which has 
already condemned cannot be the means of our acquittal. See Eph. ii : 
8. The battle is already hopelessly lost, the die cast, and cast against 
us, on this scheme. If it is to be retrieved, some other method must 
be found for doing it. 

Because the law is absolute. — 3. The law of God is absolute ; 
as the transcript of God's moral perfections, and the rule of a perfectly 
holy God, who cannot favour any sin, it requires a perfect, universal. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 129 

and perpetual obedience during tlie time of the probation. See Matt. 
xxii : 38, &c.; James ii; 10 ; Gal. iii : 10. Every precept applicable 
to our condition must be kept; they must be kept all the time; and 
must all be always kept with perfectly proper motives or intentions ! 
There is not a man upon the earth who, when his conscience was con- 
vinced of sin by the Holy Ghost, and enlightened to apprehend the 
majesty and purity of his Judge, would be willing to risk his acc-uital 
on the best act he ever performed in his life. But see 1 Jno. iii : 20. 

Because our only works fruits of Justification. — 4. While sin- 
cerely good works are an all-important part of our salvation, they 
cannot be the ground of our justifiction, because they are a result 
thereof. It is by coming into a state of favour with God, that we ac- 
quire from His grace spiritual strength to do anything truly good. 
See Jno* xv : 1 -5 ; Horn, v : 1-2 ; vi : 3, 4, 6 ; Gal. ii : 20. All other 
works which man does are carnal, selfish, or slavish, and wholly un- 
meritorious before a perfect God. Hence, it is preposterous to attri- 
bute to our works any procuring influence as to our justification. 

Fair view from apostle's standpoint. — -Indeed, the exclusion of 
works by Paul is so emphatic, that there must be some evasion adopted, 
to limit his meaning in order to leave a loophole for doubt. Those eva- 
sions we have discussed in detail. We would remark generally, in 
closing this topic, that the fair way to judge what Paul meant by 
" works of law," is to find out what an intelligent Pharisee (he was 
reared one, and was now debating with them,) would mean by " the 
Law s " when named without qualification. The answer is plain ; the 
Torah, the whole Law of the Pentateuch, moral, civic, and ceremonial. 
And this law was conceived of, not merely as a set of carnal ordinances, 
or dry forms, but as a rule spiritually holy and good. See Ps. xix: .7; 
i : 2. Nor are we to conceive that the intelligent Jew thought of an 
obedience to this law merely unspiritual, slavish and carnal. They 
comprehended such precepts as Deut. vi : 4, 5 ; Ps. Ii : 6, to be an im- 
portant part of the Law : and the evidence is, in such passages as Mark 
xii: 28-33; x: 19, 20. This certainly is the sense in which St. Paul 
employed the phrase, works of the Law, when he excludes them from 
justification, in his epistles. See Rom. iii : 20, with vii : 1-12 ; viii : 
3,4; ix: 31; x: 3. 

VII. James ii : 12-26. — The Scripture which has been supposed to 
offer the greatest difficulty against Paul's view, is Jas. ii : 12 to end. On 
this it may be remarked, for introduction : that if there is a real con- 
tradiction, both Epistles cannot be regarded as canonical; our alterna- 
tive is to reject Paul or James, or else to show their difference only 
seeming. Further: when one writer treats a given topic formally and 
professedly, (as Paul obviously does justification in Rom.,) and another 
only incidentally, it is out of all reason to force the seeming sense of 
the latter on the former. 

James' scope and terminology different. — -It is well remarked by 
Owen, that James' scope is totally different from Paul's. James' is, 
to defend justification by faith from an Antinomian perversion. (See 
ver. 14.) Paul's is, to prove, against Legalists, what is the meritorious 
ground of justification. Rom. i: 17. Again: the faith of which 
James speaks, is a dead faith : such a faith as Paul himself would de- 



130 



SYLLABUS AND NOTES 



cree non-justifying; that of which Paul speaks, when he makes it the 
sole instrument of justificatian, is a living faith, infallibly productive 
of good works. See Rom. vi. And third : the justification of which 
James speaks, presents a different phase from Paul's, namely : not 
God's secret and sovereign judicial act, transferring the sinner from a 
state of condemnation at the time of his conversion, but that act decla- 
ratively manifested at any and every subsequent time, especially at the 
day of judgment. That this is James's meaning, is argued by Owen 
irrefragably from vv. 21-23. The apostle says, Abram's justification 
"by works, when he proposed to sacrifice Isaac, was a fulfilling of that 
Scripture, (Gen. xv : 6,) which says; "He believed God, and it was 
imputed to him for righteousness. For that justification by faith was 
notoriously, some thirty years before the offering of Isaac. The latter 
transaction must therefore be, the fulfilling of the former statement, in 
the sense, that Abraham's justification was then not originated, but 
evinced. See close of ver. 23. These three remarks do sufficiently 
show, that James ought not to be held as contradicting Paul, when their 
scope and use of terms are so very different. 

Work essential as sign of justification, worthless as cause.— But 
a juster view of the matter will be gained by connecting our view of 
James ii : 14-26, with the other passages, where a similar seeming dif- 
ference is presented- — e. g., Ps. xv : 1, 2; xsiv ; 3, 4; Matt, xxv : 34, 
35,41,42; Jno. xv: 8, 14; Acts x i 35; 1 Jno. iii: 7. The amount 
of all these texts is, that a just life is the test of a justified state ; and 
the general remark is obviously true, that this is a very different 
thing from asserting that the former is the procuring cause of the latter. 
Fruit is the test of healthy life in a fruit tree : not therefore the cause 
of that life. These simple ideas go far to explain the seeming contra- 
riety of these texts to former citations. But perhaps the application 
of such an explanation to Jas. ii : 14-26, will be attended in the stu- 
dent's mind, with some difficulty just here. Are we dealing fairly with 
the text, to suppose that James does indeed use the word justify, a word 
of meaning so exact, definite and thoroughly established in Bible 
usage, in a new sense, without giving us any notice thereof? The exe- 
getical evidence that he does, is well stated by Owen, (above.) And the 
view is greatly strengthened by observing that the difference of mean- 
ing is in fact not so great. What is the transaction described, for in- 
stance, in Matt, xxv: 34, 35, and how does it differ from the act de- 
scribed in Rom. iii : 28? The latter describes the sinner's justification 
to God ; the former the sinner's justification to God's intelligent crea- 
tures, (a more correct statement than Owen's, that it describes his jus- 
tification by man.) Each is a declaratory, and forensic act; but the 
one is secret as yet to God and the justified soul ; the other is a procla- 
mation of the same declaration to other fellow-creatures. And it is 
most proper that the latter should be based on the personal possession 
of a righteous character: in order that the universe may see and ap- 
plaud the correspondence betweeu God's justifying grace and His sanc- 
tifying grace ; and thus the divine holiness may be duly magnified. 

VIII. Christ did not lower the law. — A scheme of justification 
has been advanced by many of the lower Armenians, which is, in its- 
practical results, not very far removed from the Popish. It represents 



OF LECTURES IN" THEOLOGY. 131 

that the purpose of Christ's work for man was not to procure a righteous- 
ness to be imputed to any individual believers ; but to offer to God such 
a mediatorial work, as would procure for believers in general the I'epeal 
of the old, absolute and unbending law as a rule of justification, and 
the substitution of a milder law, one which demands only sincere evan- 
gelical obedience. The thing then, which is imputed for the sinner's 
justification, is the whole merit of his sincere faith, humble penitence, and 
strivings to do his duty ; which God is pleased, for Christ's sake, to 
accept in lieu of a perfect righteousness. These theologians would say, 
with the Romanists, and higher Arminians, that our " faith is accounted 
as our righteousness •;" but they would define justifying faith as a semi- 
nal principle of good works, and inclusive of all the obedieuce which 
was to flow from it. The point of inosculation of this, and the Popish 
theory (determining them to be the same in essential character) is here. 
They both conceive Christ as having procured for man (in general) a 
new probation, evangelical indeed, instead of absolute ; but in which the 
sinner still has his own proximate merit of justification to work out, by 
something he does. Whereas, the Bible conception is, that the second 
Adam perfected, for his people, the line of probation dropped by Adam, 
by purchasing for them a title to eternal life, and covering also, all guilt 
of the breaches of the first covenant. 

On this theory, I would remark, at the outset, that it comes with a very 
poor grace from the men who object to the imputation of Christ's right- 
eousness to us, because it was not literally and personally wrought by 
us. It seems they consider that it is more consistent in G-od to account 
a believer's righteousness to him as that which it is not, thus basing his 
justification on a falsehood, than to account the legal benefits of Christ's 
righteousness to him for what it truly is — i. e., a perfect righteousness! 
But: 

Proofs. 1. The law unchangeable as God. — 1. The source and 
basis of God's moral law is His own moral character; which is neces- 
sary and immutable. Supposing creatures to exist, there are certain 
relations between them and God which cannot be other than they are, 
God continuing what He is. Among these must obviously be the es- 
sential moral relations of the law. These flow, not from any positive 
institution of God alone, but also from the very relations of creatures 
and the attributes of God. And if any moral relations are necessary, 
the requirement of a universal obedience is clearly so ; because our 
Saviour represents the obligation to love God with all the mind, soul, 
heart, and strength, and our neighbour as ourself, as the very essence 
of that law. Hence, the idea that God can substitute an imperfect 
law for one perfect, is a derogation to His perfection. Either the 
former standard required more than was right, or the new one requires 
less than is right ; and in either case God would be unrighteous. That 
Christ should perform all His work as an inducement to His Father 
to perform such unrighteousness, would be derogatory to Him. Hence, 
we find that He expressly repudiates such a design. Matt, v : 17. 
And here we may add, that the Bible nowhere indicates such a relaxa- 
tion of the believer's law of living. David, a justified person, repre- 
sents the rule by which he regulated himself, as "perfect," "pure," 
and "'right," and "very righteous." Ps. xix : 7,8; cxix : 140; Jas. 
i: 25; ii : 10. Everywhere, the law which we are still required to 



132 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

obey, is the same law -which by its perfectness condemned us, Practi- 
cally, the allowance of an imperfect standard of obedience would be 
ruinous ; because man ever falls below his standard. 

Asserted changes or law explained. — It is objected again : God 
has changed His law, substituting certain simpler and easier precepts, 
in place of old ones; as in abrogating the burdensome ritual of Moses, 
and giving in its place the easy yoke of the New Testament ceremonial. 
We reply : those were only positive, not eternal and natural precepts 
of morality ; the obligation to keep them only arose from God's com- 
mand to do so ; and hence, when the command was retracted, there 
was no longer any sin in their omission. To retract such commands 
is far different from making that no longer sin, which is in its nature 
sin. Again, it has been objected, that God's permission has been 
given, in some cases, to do what without such permission would have 
been in its nature sin ; as when Abraham was directed to slay Isaac y 
and Israel the Canaanites. It seems to me surprising that these cases 
should be advanced with any confidence in this argument, or that they 
should be supposed by any to prove that the intrinsic relations of mor- 
ality are alterable by God's mere positive precepts; or that so acute a 
writer as Mansel, in his "Limits of Religious Thought," should feel 
occasion to take refuge from the exigencies of the case in the inability 
of human reason to conceive the infinite and absolute Being fully. 
The truth is, that in those cases there is no alteration whatever of any 
principle of natural morality by which God has ever regulated Him- 
self, or His human subjects. It always has been right for God to slay 
any of His rebel creatures, whom He pleases ; He kills some thirty 
millions of them each year, by various means, And whenever God 
appoints man to slay it is no sin for him to do so, be it in the case of 
magistrates, self-defence, or defensive war. So that God's appoint- 
ment of a man to take a given life renders it perfectly moral to take 
it. An instance of such an appointment is therefore no instance at all, 
of a conversion of what is naturally sinful into right. As fairly might 
one say, that when the master tells his servants that the unauthorized 
use of his substance is theft, and afterwards dii'ects one of them to go 
to take and consume some fruit of bis field, he has undertaken to alter 
the fundamental relations of morality! We repeat: there is, and can 
be no case, in which God has made that which is naturally wrong to 
be right. 

Saints strive to keep the perfect law. — 2. Scripture represents 
the Bible saints as repudiating all their own works, even while they 
protest their affectionate sincerity in them. See Job xl : 4, &e. More- 
over, their consciences rebuke them for every shortcoming from perfect 
love and holiness. Surely that which cannot justify us to our own 
consciences, will hardly answer with God I We appeal to each man's 
conscience: when it is enlightened by the Holy Ghost,, does not it 
bear out this experience of Bible saints? 

The Law would not be magnified. — 3. By such a scheme of jus- 
tification Christ's work, instead of resulting in a complete harmonizing 
of God's absolute holiness and perfect Law, in the sinner's acceptance, 
would leave the law forever ruptured and dislocated. We are taught 
in Scripture that Christ was to "magnify the Law, and make it hon- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 133 

curable ;" " that mercy and truth were to meet together, and right- 
eousness and peace kiss each other ;" that He "came not to destroy the 
Law, but to fulfil." Now, if He has procured the abrogation of that 
perfect law, during each believer's Christian life, there is a demand of 
the law which remains unmet; and that forever. The doctrine makes 
a piece of patchwork ; men do not sew new cloth on an old garment. 

IX. Wesleyan view. Imputation of Faith for Justification. 
— The higher Arminians, of the school of Wesley, now teach that faith 
is imputed as the believer's righteousness, on account of which he is 
justified. They define justification to be only mere pardon ; and affirm, 
in many phrases, that this pardon is unbought, and for Christ's sake. 
So that it is hard to understand what office they assign to faith in jus- 
tification, unless it be the true one of the instrument. Yet they persist 
in repudiating the Calvinistic doctrine of the imputation of the merit 
of Christ's righteousness, and in equally repudiating the losverview 
discussed by us above; so that tiie ground on which they stand seems 
to me wholly intangible and vague : unless it is, that in consequence 
of Christ's work and mediation, God is pleased to accept our faith as 
an equivalent, or substitution for righteousness. 

Makes Faith a Work. — In this view, the doctrine is open to all the 
objections urged against the one just refuted above, and in greater 
force ; for it represents God's imputation as a most glaring violation of 
truth, in accounting, not the imperfect duties of a Christian life, but 
one imperfect act, as a complete obedience ! And while it seems to re- 
pudiate works, and establish faith, it really foists in again the doctrine 
of human merit and works ; for faith is also an act, an act of obe- 
dience to law, (Jno. vi : 29; 1 Jno. iii : 23,) and if rendered as a 
matter of a righteousness before God, or, indeed, for anything except 
the mere instrument of accepting Christ, it is a work. But faith and 
works should be opposed. 

Faith only receives. — Again: the idea that faith is accounted to us 
as our justifying righteousness, contradicts in two ways, that nature 
which Scripture attributes to it. It is said in many places, that right- 
eousness is by faith. (Rom. i: 17, &c, &c.) Now, then, it cannot be 
identical with it. Moreover, faith is defined as an act purely recep- 
tive, and receptive of Christ our righteousness. Jno. i : 12. Now, that 
it should be a righteousness when its very nature is to embrace a right- 
eousness, is as contradictory as that the beggar's confessions of desti- 
tution can constitute a iprice to purchase relief. 

The righteousness imputed is God's. — And last: the whole ques- 
tion is decisively settled against this theory, as well as against the Po- 
pish, and all other false ones, which make the procuring cause of our 
justifiation to be, either in whole or in part, anything wrought by us, 
or wrought in us, in all those passages which declare that we are justi- 
fied on account of GooVs righteousness, and sometimes it is God's 
righteousness as contrasted with ours. See Rom. i: 17; iii: 22; Phil, 
iii : 9. How can these expressions be evaded 1 The righteousness by 
which we are justified is not ours, but God's — therefore not constituted 
of any acts or graces of ours. 

Wesleyan proof-texts considered. — But, says the Arminian, it is 
vain to speculate against the express words of Scripture ; and here 



134 SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 

we have it, four times over, G-en. • xv : 6; Rom. iv : 3, 5, 24. We re- 
ply, that they clearly overstrain and force the text. It is true, that in 
Gen. xv : 6, the construction is, " His faith was accounted righteous- 
ness," (no Preposition.) Now, suppose that in the other three cases in the 
New Testament, the construction were even as difficult as they suppose 
in this: would not a fair criticism say that these somewhat peculiar 
statements should not be strained into a sense contradictory to the 
current of plainer expressions elsewhere, which always say we ob- 
tain righteousness by our faith ! And as Calvin well argues, on Gen. 
xv : G, when the very context clearly shows that the whole amount of 
Abraham's faith in this case was to embrace a set of promises tendered 
to Him, since it did not bring anything on its own part to the trans- 
action, but merely received what God brought, in His promise, the 
sense must not, and cannot be strained, to make the receptive act the 
meritorious cause of the bestowal which itself merely accepted. There 
is obviously just such an embracing of the result in the instrument, as 
occurs in Jno. xii : 50; xvii : 3. But our case is far stronger than 
even this. The Septuagint and Paul, an inspired interpreter, uui- 
fornily gives the sense, Pistis logidzetai eis dikaiosunen. This all 
these Arminian interpreters, with a perverse inattention or ignorance, 
persist in translating "faith is accounted as righteousness;" the Eng- 
lish ones being probably misled by the occasional use of our preposi- 
tion, "for" in the sense of "as;" (e. g., "I reckon him for a valuable 
citizen.") But the Greek preposition, eis, with the accusative, very 
rarely carries that sense: no good grammarian allows it ; and its ob- 
vious force in this passage is, that of designed result. " His faith is 
imputed in order to the attaining of righteousness" — i.e., Christ's 
This gives faith its proper instrumental office. Compare Rom. x : 10. 
Pisteuei eis dikaios. Consult Harrison's Greek Prep., and Cases, 
p. 226. I am aware of but one case in the Scripture where this locu- 
tion bears the sense imputed to it by the Wesleyans, in the texts under 
debate. 

All locutions of Scriptuke prove faith instrumental. — In con- 
clusion of this head, the Scriptures clearly assign that office, on the 
whole, to faith. This appears, first, from its nature, as receptive of a 
promise. The matter embraced must of course be contributed by the 
promiser. The act of the receiver is not procuring, but only instru- 
mental. Second, all the locutions in which faith is connected with 
justification express the instrumental idea by their fair grammatical 
force. Thus, the current expressions are, justified Pistei (Ablative), 
diapisteos, ek pisteos. Never once are we said to be justified dia 
pistin, the construction which is commonly used to express the rela- 
tion of Christ's righteousness, or blood, to our justification. 

N. Proof of the Doctrine from Scripture. — We have now passed 
in review all the prominent theories which deny the truth. By 
precluding one, and then another, we have shut the inquirer up to tiie 
Bible doctrine, that the sinner is justified " only for the righteousness 
of Christ imputed to vis." The remaining affirmative argument for 
this proposition is therefore very short and simple : it will consist in a 
grouping together of the Bible statements; so classified as to exhibit 
the multitude of proof-texts by a few representatives: 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 135 

1. Our justification is gratuitous. Rom. iii : 24; Eph. ii : 5 ; Tit. 
iii : 7. 

2. Christ is our Surety. Heb. vii : 22 : and our sins are imputed to 
Him, that His righteousness may be imputed to us. Is. liii: 6 and 11 ; 
2 Cor. v: 21; 1 Pet. ii : 24. 

3. He is our propitiation. Rom. iii: 25; 1 Jno. ii : 2. 

4. We are justified through Christ, or for His name, or Mis sake, or by 
Bis blood. Acts x: 43; xiii: 38,39; Eph. i: 7, iv : 32; Rom. v : 
9; 1 Jno. ii: 12. 

5. Christ is called " our righteousness." Jer. xxxiii ; 6; 1 Cor. i : 
30; Rom. x: 4. 

6. We are justified by His obedience, or righteousness. Rom. v : 18, 19. 

7. The righteousness that justifies us is God's and Christ's, as opposed 
to ours. Rom. i: 17; iii: 22; Phil, iii : 9. 



LECTURE LIE 



SYLLABUS. 
JUSTIFICATION. (Concluded.) 

11. Define and prove the imputation of Christ's righteousness ; and answer 
objections to it. Compare the case of Adam. Eom. v. 

Turrettin, Loc. xvi, que. 3, § 1-10 especially. Owen on Justification, ch. 
vii and viii. Dick, Lect. 70. Dr. Alexander's Tract. Watson, Theol. 
Inst., ch. xxiii. 

12. Is justification a single, complete, and absolute act? How is it related 
to sins committed after conversion, and to the final judgment? 

Turrettin, que rg and 10. Owen, ch. vi. Hill.Bk. v, ch. 2. Knapp, § 113. 
Trrrettin, que. 5. 

13. Is faith the sole instrumental condition of justification; or also re- 
pentance? 

Turrettin, que. 3, § 10-17. Owen, ch. ii. Dick, Lect. 71. 

14. How are justification and sanctification distinguish?d ? Are they in- 
separable ? Why then discriminate them ? 

Turrettin, que. 1. Dick, Lect. 70. Hill, Bk. v, ch. 3. 

15. What the proper place and importance of good work3 in the believer's 
salvation ? 

Turrettin, Loc. xvii, que. 3. Dick, Lect. 71. Hill, as above. Knapp, 
§ 115, 116. 

16. May we then sin, " because we are not under law, but under grace ?" 
Witherspoon on Justification. Owen, ch. xix. Turrettin, Loc. xvii, que. 
1. Dick, Lect. 72. Watson, ch. xvii, § 3. 

XI. Imputation. — Our last attempt was to prove that the meri- 
torious cause of the believer's justification is the righteousness of 
Christ. But how comes it that this righteousness avails for us, or that 
its justifying efficacy is made ours? The answer to this question leads 



136 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

us to the doctrine of imputation. The Catechism says that Christ's 
righteousness is imputed to us. This Latin word, to reckon or account 
to any one, is sometimes employed in the English Scriptures as the 
translation of hashab, logidzomai, ellogeo, and correctly. Of the 
former we have instances in G-en. xv : 6; xxxviii : 15; 2 Sam. xix : 
1-9 ; of the nest in Mark xv : 28; Kom. ii: 26; iv: 5, &o. ; Gal. iii : 
6, &c; and of the last, in Rom. v; 13 ; Philem. xviii. 

Defined. Owen criticised. — -It is evident that sometimes the 
thing imputed is what is actually done by, or belongs personally to, 
the person to whom it is reckoned, or set over. (This is what Turret- 
tin calls imputation loosely so called.) Sometimes the thing imputed 
belonged to, or was done by another, as in Phil, xviii; Rom. iv: 6. 
This is the imputation which takes place in the sinner's justification. 
It may be said, without affecting excessive subtlety of definition, that 
by imputation of Christ's righteousness, we only mean that Christ's 
righteousness is so accounted to the sinner, as that he receives there- 
upon the legal consequences to which it entitles. In accordance with 
2 Cor. v: 21, as well as with the dictates of sound reason, we regard 
it as the exact counterpart of the imputation of our sins to Christ. 
Owen does, indeed, deny this: asserting that the latter only produced 
a temporary change in Christ's legal state, and that He was able 
speedily to extinguish the claims of law against our guilt, and return 
to His glory ; while the former so imputes His very righteousness as to 
make a final and everlasting change in our legal relations. We reply: 
the difference is not in the kind of imputation, but in the persons. 
The mediatorial Person was so divine and infinite, that temporary suf- 
ferings and obedience met and extinguished all the legal claims upon 
Him. Again ; Owen pleads that we must suppose Christ's very righteous- 
ness, imputed to us, in another sense than our sins are to Him; be- 
cause, to talk of imputing to us the legal consequences of His righteous- 
ness, such as pardon, &c, is nonsensical, pardon being the result of the 
imputation. But would not the same reasoning prove as well, that 
not only our guilt, but our very sinfulness must have been imputed to 
Christ ; because it is nonsensical to to talk of imputing condemnation ! 
The truth is, the thing set over to our account, in the former case, is, 
in strictness of speech, the title to the consequences, of pardon and ac- 
ceptance, founded on Christ's righteousness, as in the latter case it was 
the guilt of our sins — i. e., the obligation to punishment founded on 
our sinfulness. All are agreed that, when the Bible says, "the ini- 
quity of us all was laid on Christ," or that "He bare our sins," or 
" was made sin for us," it is only our guilt and not our moral attribute 
of sinfulness which was imputed. So it seems to me far more reason- 
able and scriptural to suppose that in the imputation of Christ's right- 
eousness, it is not the attribute of righteousness in Christ, which is 
imputed, but that which is the exact counterpart of guilt — the title to 
acquital. Owen, in proceeding to argue against objections, strongly 
states that imputation does net make the sinner personally and actually 
righteous with Christ's righteousness as a quality. We should like, 
then, to know what he means, that this righteousness is really and 
truly imputed to us in a more literal sense than our sins were to Christ. 
A middle ground is to me invisible. 






. OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 137 

Basis of Justification. — 'The basis on which this imputation pro- 
ceeds, is our union to Christ. There is, first, our natural union consti- 
tuting Him a member of our race, a man as truly as we are men. But 
this, though an essential prerequisite, is not by itself enough ; for if so, 
mere humanity would constiiute every sinner a sharer in His righteous- 
ness. There must be added our mystical union, in which a legal and 
spiritual connexion are established by God's sovereign dispensation, 
making Him our legal, and our spiritual Head. Thus imputation be- 
comes proper. 

Is the idea in Scripture 1 — -When we attempt to prove this impu- 
tation, we are met with the assertion, by Arminians, and theologians 
of the New England School, that there is no instance in the whole Bible 
of anything imputed, except that which the man personally does or 
posseses himself; so that there is no Scriptural warrant for this idea 
of transference of righteousness as to its legal consequences. We 
point, in reply, to Philem. 18, and to Rom. iv : 6. If God imputeth 
to a man righteousness without works, and his faith cannot literally 
be this imputed righteousness, as we have abundantly proved, we should 
like to know where that imputed righteousness comes from. Certainly 
it cannot come personally from the sinner who is without loorks. The 
whole context shows that it is Christ's. But how sorry an artifice is it 
to seise on the circumstance that the word logidzesthai happens not 
be immediately connected with Christ's name in the same sentence, 
when the idea is set forth in so many phrases 1 Moreover, as Turrettin 
remarks, every case of pardoned guilt is a case (see 2 Sam. xix : 19,) 
of this kind of imputation ; for something is reckoned to the sinner — 
I. e., legal innocency, or title to immunity, which is not personally his 
own. 

Proofs, farther. — The direct arguments for the imputation of 
Christ's righteousness are; 1st. The counterpart imputation of our 
guilt to Him. (Proved by Is. liii - 5, 6, 12; Heb. ix ; 28; 1 Pet. ii : 
24, &c.) For the principles involved are so obviously the same, and 
the one transaction so obviously the procurer of the other, that none 
who admit a proper imputation of human guilt to Christ, will readily 
deny an imputation of His righteousness to man. Indeed both are 
conclusively stated in 2 Cor. v: 21. The old Reformed exposition of 
this important passage, by some of our divines, was to read, "Christ 
was made a sin-offering for us." The objection is: that by this view 
no counterpart is presented in the counterpart proposition : " we are 
made the righteousness of God in Him." It is obvious that St. Paul 
uses the abstract for the concrete. Christ was made a sinner for us, 
that we might be made righteous persons in Him. The senses of the 
two members of the parallelism must correspond. There is no other 
tenable sense than this obvious one — that our guilt (obligation to pen- 
alty) was imputed to Christ, that His righteousness (title to reward) 
might be imputed to us. 2d. Christ is said to be our righteousness. 
Jer. xxiii : 6 ; 1 Cor. i : 30, &c, expressions which can only be hon- 
estly received, by admitting the idea of imputation. 3d. By "His 
obedience many are constituted righteous ;" katastathesontai. 
Here is imputation. So we might go through most of the passages 
cited to prove that we are justified on account of Christ's righteousness, 



138 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

and show that they all involve the idea of imputation. Indeed, how 
else can the legal consequences of His righteousness become outs'? To 
see the force of all these, we have only to remember that all who deny 
imputation, also deny that Christ's righteousness is the sole meritorious 
ground, thus plainly implying that the latter necessarily involves the 
former. 4th. Imputation of Christ's righteousness to us is argued by 
Paul in Romans. 5th. From imputation of Adam's sin to us. 

Objections solved. — Objections have been strenuously urged against 
this doctrine, of which the most grave is that it encourages licentious- 
nessof living. This will be separately considered under § XV. It has 
again, been urged that it is impious, in representing Christ as per- 
sonally the worse Being in the universe ; and false to fact, in repre- 
senting His act in assuming our law place as the act which drew down 
God's wrath on Him ; whereas it was an act of lovely benevolence, ac- 
cording to the Calvinistic view of it; and also false, as representing 
the sinner as personally holy at the very time his contrition avows him 
to be vilest. The answer is, that all these objections mistake the na- 
ture of imputation, which is not a transfer of moral character, but of 
legal relation. And Christ's act in taking our law place was a lovely 
act. In strictness of speech, it was not this act which drew down His 
Father's wrath, (but His love — Jno. x; 17,) but the guilt so assumed. 
For the discussion of more subtile objection, that guilt must be as un- 
transferable as personal demerit, because it is the consequence of 
demerit alone, — see Lect. slii. 

XII. Justification complete.— The important principle has al- 
ready been stated, that justification must be as complete as its merito- 
rious ground. Since Faith is only the instrument of its reception, the 
comparative weakness or strength of faith will not determine any 
degrees of justification in different Christians. Feeble faith which is 
living truly leads to Christ, and Christ is our righteousness alone. Our 
justifying righteousness is in Christ. The office of faith is simply to 
be the instrument for instituting the union of the believing soul to 
Him; so that it may "receive of His fullness grace for grace." Sup- 
pose in men's bodies a mortal disease, of which the perfect cure was a 
shock of electricity, received from some exhaustless " receiver," by 
contact. One man, discovering his mortal taint, but yet little enfee- 
bled, rushes to the electrical receiver and claps his hand swiftly upon 
it, with all the force of a violent blow. He receives his shock, and is 
saved. Another, almost fainting, can only creep along the floor with 
the greatest difficulty, and has barely strength to raise his languid 
hand and lay it on the "receiver." He also derives the same shock, 
and the same healing. The power is in the electricity, not in the im- 
pact of the two hands. Hence, also, it will follow that justification is 
an instantaneous act, making at once a complete change of legal con- 
dition. See Horn, iii: 22; Jno. ill ; 36; v: 24; Rom. viii: 1, 34 
with 32; Col. ii: 9, 10; Heb. x: 14; Micah vii : 19; Jer. 1: 20: Ps. 
ciii : 12, &c. And this legal completeness, it is too evident to need 
proof, begins when the sinner believes, and at no other time. 

But sense and fruits of it may grow. — But here two distinctions 
must be taken — one between the completeness of title, and complete- 
ness of pvsesaion as to the benefits of our justification; the other be- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 139 

tween our justification in God's breast, and our own sense and consci- 
ousness thereof. On the latter distinction, we may remark: as our 
faith strengthens so will the strength of our apprehension of a justified 
state grow with it. The former also may, to some extent, be affected 
by the increase of our faith. God may make that increase the occasion 
of manifesting to the soul larger measures of favour and grace. But 
the soul is not one whit more God's accepted child then, than when it 
first believed. We have seen that the thing which, strictly speaking, 
is imputed, is the title to all the legal consequences of Christ's righteous- 
ness — i. e., title to pardon and everlasting adoption, with all the in- 
cluded graces. Now, the acknowledged and legitimate son of a king 
is a prince, though an infant. His status and inheritance are royal, 
and sure, though he be for a time under tutors and governors, and 
though he may gradually be put into possession of one, and another, 
of his privileges, till his complete majority. So the gradual possession 
of the benefits of justification does not imply that our acquision of the 
title is gradual. 

Does Justification remit sins in future? — These views may as- 
sist us in the intricate subject of the relation which justification bears 
to the believer's future sins. On the one hand these things are evi- 
dent : that there is not a man on the earth who does not offend, (Jas. 
iii ; 2,) that sin must always be sin in its nature, and as such abhorrent 
to God by whomsoever committed; and even more abhorrent in a be- 
liever, because committed against greater obligations and vows; and 
that sins committed after justification need an atonement just as truly 
as those before. On the other hand, the proofs above given clearly 
show that the justified believer does not pass again under condemnation 
when betrayed into sin. Faith is the instrument for continuing, as it 
was for originating our justified state. This is clear from Rom. xi : 
20; Heb. x: 38, as well as from the experience of all believers, who 
universally apply afresh to Christ for cleansing, when their consciences 
are oppressed with new sin. In strictness of speech, a man's sin must 
be forgiven after it is committed. How, then, stands the sinning be- 
liever, between the time of a new sin, and his new application to 
Christ's cleansing blood? We reply: Justification is the act of an 
immutable God, determining not to impute sin through the believer's 
faith. This faith, though not in instant exercise at every moment, is an 
undying principle in the believer's heart, being rendered indefectible 
onl\ by God's purpose of grace, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. 
So God determines, when the believer sins, not to impute guilt for 
Christ's sake, which determination also implies this other, to secure in 
the believer's heart, the unfailing actings of faith and repentance, as to 
all known sin. So that his justification from future sins is not so much 
a pardoning of them before they are committed, as an unfailing provi- 
sion by God both of the meritorious and instrumental causes of their 
pardon as they are committed. 

How related to Judgment-day ? — There are two qualified senses, 
in which we are said to be justified at the judgment-day. See Acts 
iii: 19—21 ; Matt, xii : 36, 37. Indeed, a forensic act is implied 
somehow in the very notion of a judgment-day. First: Then, at 
length, the benefits of the believer's justification in Christ will be fully 



140 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

confereed, and he will, by the resurrction, be put into possession of 
the last of them, the redemption of his body. Second : There will be 
st declaration of the sentence of justificatian passed when each believer 
blieved, which God will publish! to His assembled creatures, for His 
declarative glory, and for their instruction. See Malachi iii : 17, 18. 
This last declarative justification will be grounded on believers' works, 
(Matt, xxv,) and not on their faith, necessarily ; because it will be ad- 
dressed to the fellow-creatures of the saints, who cannot read the heart, 
and can only know the existence of faith by the fruits. 

XIII. Faith only instrument. — That faith alone is the instrument 
of justification, is asserted by the Catechism, que. 33. The proof is 
row-fold : First. That this is the only act of the soul which, in its 
character, is receptive of Christ's righteousness. Kepentance and 
other graces are essential, and have their all important relations to 
other parts of our salvation ; but faith alone is the embracing act, and 
this alone is the act which contributes nothing, which looks wholly out 
of self for its object and its efficacy, and thus is compatible with a 
righteousness without works. Second. It is said in so many forms, 
that righteousness is by faith ; and especially is this said most fre- 
quently where the technical act of justification is formally discussed, 
as separated from the other parts of our salvation. Then there are 
passages in which this is held up singly, in answer to direct inquiries, 
as the sole instrumental act, which do not leave us at liberty that any 
other one would have been omitted, if there had been one ; e. g., Jno. 
vi: 29; Acts xv.i: 31. 

Connexion of Repentance Explained. — Yet, it is strenuously ob- 
jected by some, (even of sound divines,) that in many places repentance 
is spoken of along with faith as a term of gospel salvation, and in 
some cases, even to the exclusion of faith. Mark i : 15; Luke xiii ; 
3; Acts xx : 21; and especially, Acts ii : 38; iii: 19. The chief 
force is in the last two. As to the previous ones, it is very obvious 
that to make repentance necessary to salvation, does not prove that it 
performs this particular work in our salvation, the instrumental accep- 
tance of a justifying righteousness. We might even say that repen- 
tance is a necessary condition of justification, and yet not make it the in- 
strument; for there is a sense in which perseverance is such a condition. 
Heb x : 38. But to make it the instrument is absurd ; for then no one 
would be justified till death. But it maybe urged, in Acts ii : 38, and 
iii : 19, repentance is explicitly proposed as in order to remission, which is 
an element of justification itself. We reply ; this is not to be pressed ; 
for thus we should equally prove, Acts ii : 38, that baptism is an instru- 
ment of justification ; and, llom. x ; 9, 10, that profession is, equally with 
living faith, an instrument of justification. These passages are to be 
reconciled to our affirmative proof-texts, by remembering that repen- 
tance is used in Scripture much more comprehensively than saving faith. 
It is the whole conversion of the soul to God, the general acting in 
which faith is implicitly involved. When the Apostle calls for repen- 
tance, he virtually calls for faith ; for as the actings of faith imply a 
penitent frame, so the exercise of repentance includes faith. It is 
therefore proper, that when a comprehensive answer is demanded to 
the question, "What must we do ?" that auswer should be generally, 



OF LECTUKES IX THEOLOGY. 141 

" Repent," and that when the instrument of justification is inquired 
after specially, the answer should be, " Believe." 

XIV. Works do not justify, yet necessary. — The question once 
debated : -whether faith or good works be most important to a believer ? 
is as foolish as though one should debate, whether roots or fruits were 
most essential to a fruit-tree. If either be lacking, there is no fruit- 
tree at all. Good works, when comprehensively understood for all 
holy actings of heart and life, hold the place of supreme importance 
in our redemption, as the ulterior end, not indeed in any sense the 
procuring cause, but yet the grand object and purpose. And the dig- 
nity of the end is in one sense higher than that of the means. 

Because they most essential to God's ultimate end. — The 
final cause of God, or ultimate highest end in His view in our justifica- 
tion, is His own glory. The chief means or next medium thereto, is 
our sanctification and good works; for God's nature is holy, and cannot 
be glorified by sin, except indirectly in its punishment. If we look, 
then, at His immutable will and glory, we find an imperative demand 
for holiness and works. If we look next at the interests of God's 
kingdom as affected by us, we find an equal necessity for our good 
works: for it is sin which originates all mischief and danger, and dis- 
order to the subjects of God's government. And if we look, third, at our 
own personal interest and well-being, as promoted by our redemption, 
we see good works to be equally essential ; becanse to be sinful is to 
be miserable ; and true holiness alone is true happiness. 

Because all the plan of Redemption incites them. — Hence, we 
find that God in many places mentions redemption from corruption, 
rather than redemption from guilt, as His prominent object in the Cov- 
enant of Grace. See Titus ii: 14; Eph. i: 4; v: 25-27: 1 Thes. iv : 
3; 1 Jno. iii : 8; Matt, i; 21. And all the features of this plan of 
redemption, in its execution, show that God's prime object is the pro- 
duction of holiness — yea, of holiness in preference to present happiness, 
in His people. The first benefit bestowed, in our union to Christ, is a 
holy heart. The most constant and prominent gifts ministered through 
Christ are those of sanctification and spiritual strength to do good 
works. The designs of God's providence constantly postpone the be- 
liever's comfort to his sanctification by the means of afflictions. When 
the question is, to make one of God's children holier, at the expense 
of his present happiness, God never hesitates. Again, the whole gos- 
pel system is so constructed as to be not merely an expedient for intro- 
ducing justification, but a system of moral motives for producing 
sanctification, and that of wondrous power. Let the student look up 
itselements. And last. This very gospel teems with most urgent injunc- 
tions on believers already justified to keep this law, in all its original 
strictness and spirituality. See, especially, Matt, v : 17-20; Gal. v : 
13 ; Rom. vi ; 6 ; vii : 6 ; Jno. xiii : 34 ; 1 Pet. i : 15, 16, &c. 

The law is no longer our rule of justification, but it is still our rule 
of life. 

XY. Is justifiction by grace licentious in tendency 1 — We have 
reserved to the close the discussion of the objection, that this doctrine 
of justification, by faith on Christ's righteousness, tends to loosen the 
bonds of the moral law. There are two parties who suggest this idea — the 



142 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

legalists, who urge it as an unavoidable objection to our doctrine, and 
the Antinomians, who accept it as a just consequence of the doctrine. 
Both classes may be dealt with together, except as to one point growiug 
out of our assertion that Christ fulfilled the preceptive, as well as bore 
the penal law in our stead. If this be so, says the Antinomian, how 
can God exact obedience of the believer, as an essential of the Chris- 
tian state, without committing the unrighteousness of demanding pay- 
ment of the same debt twice over 1 ? I reply, that it is not a pecuuiary, 
but a moral debt. In explaning the doctrine of substitution, I showed 
that God's acceptance of our Surety's work in our room was wholly an 
optional and gracious act with Him, because Christ's vicarious work, 
however well adapted to satisfy the law in our stead, did not necessa- 
rily and naturally extinguish the claims of the law on us; was not a 
" legal tender" in such sense that God was obliged either to take that, 
or lose all claims. Now, as God's accepting the substitutionary right- 
eousness at all was an act of mere grace, the extent to which He shall 
accept it deperds on His mere will. And it can release us no farther 
than He graciously pleases to allow. Hence, if He tells us, as He 
does, that He does not so accept it, as to release us from the law as a 
rule of life, there is no injustice. 

We preface further, that the objection of the legalist proceeds upon 
the supposition, that if the motives of fear and self-interest for obey- 
ing God be removed, none will be left. But are these the only mo- 
tives? God forbid. 

No, but sanctifying. — Indeed, we assert that the plan of justification 
by faith leaves all the motives of self-interest and fear, which could 
legitimately and usefully operate on a soul under the Covenant of 
Works, in full force; and adds others, of vast superiority. Bom. 
iii: 31. 

All legitimate self-interest remains. — 1. The motives of self- 
interest and fear remain, so far as they properly ought to operate on a 
renewed soul, a.) While "eternal life is the gift of God," the mea- 
sure of its glories is our works. See Luke xix : 17-19; Matt, x: 42; 
2 Cor. ix: 6. Here is a motive to do as many good works as possible, 
b.) Works remain, although deposed from the meritorious place as 
our justification of supreme importance as the object and end. Hence, 
c.) They are the only adequate test of a justified state, as proved 
above. Thus, the conscience of the backslider should be as much 
stimulated by the necessity of having them, as though they were to be 
his righteousness. 

Faith purifies. — 2. The gospel shows its superior efficiency over a 
system of legality, in producing holy living, in this respect; that its 
instrument in justification is a living faith. A dead faith does not justify. 
Now, it is the nature of a justifying faith to give an active response to 
the vitalizing energy of God's truth. It is granted that the truth, 
which is the immediate object of its actings unto justification, is Christ's 
redemption; but its nature ensures that it shall be vitally sensitive 
to all God's truth, as fast as apprehended. Now, the precepts are as 
really divine truth, the proper object of this vital action of a living 
faith as the promises. Such is the teaching of our Confession in that in- 
structive passage, ch. xiv, § ii. "By this faith a Christian believeth 






OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 143 

to be true whatsoever is revealed in the word, for the authority of 
God Himself speaking therein, and acteth differently, upon that which 
each passage thereof containeth ; yielding obedience to the commands, 
trembling at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for 
this life, and that which is to come. But the principle acts of saving 
faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justi- 
fication, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the Covenant of 
Grace." The soul is not made alive in patches. It is alive all over. 
That principle of faith, therefore, which actively respgjnds to the pro- 
mise, responds just so likewise to the precepts, especially as precepts 
and prjmises are so intertwined. See Ps. xxxii : 1, 2; Bom. viii : 1. 

Gospel appeals to love. — b.) The gospel is efficient in producing 
holy living, because it gives the strongest possible picture of the evil 
of sin, of God's inflexible requisition of a perfect righteousness, and 
of His holiness, c.) Above all, it generates a noble, pure, and pow- 
erful motive for obedience, love, begotten by God's goodness in re- 
demption. And here, the peculiar glory of the gospel, as a religion- 
fur sinne>s, appears. I believe that the justified believer should have 
motives to holy living, which if their whole just force were felt, would 
be more operative than those which Adam in innocence could have felt 
under the Covenant of Works. See above. But when we consider 
that man is no longer innocent, but naturally condemned and depraved, 
under wrath, and fundamentally hostile to God, we see that a Covenant 
of Works would now be, for him, infinitely inferior in its sanctifying 
influences. For the only obedience it could evoke from such a heart, 
would be one slavish, selfish, and calculated — i. e., no true heart obe- 
dience at all — but a mere trafficking with God for self-interest. Now, 
contrast with this an obedience of love, and of gratitude, which ex- 
pects to purchase nothing thereby from God, because all is already 
given, freely, graciously, and therefore obeys with ingenuous love and 
thankfulness. How much more pleasing to God ! And last : Love is 
a principle of action as permanent and energetic as it is pure. Wit- 
ness even the human examples of it. Wheu we look to those social 
affections, which have retained their disinterestedness (towards man) 
through the corruptions of our fall, we see there the most influential, 
as well as the purest principles of human action, the springs of all 
that is most energetic, and persevering, as well as most generous. 

Love, the most operative. — We sometimes hear the legalists, of 
various schools, say: "a correct knowledge of human natui-e will warn 
us, that if the principles of fear and self-interest are removed from 
man's religious obedience, he will render none ; for these are the main 
springs of human action." We do not represent the gospel scheme as 
rejecting the legitimate action of those springs. But their view of 
human nature is false ; fear and self-interest are not its most energetic 
principles. Many a virtuous son and daughter render to an infirm 
parent, who has no ability or will to punish, and no means of reward- 
ing save with his blesssing, a service more devoted, painful, and con- 
tinued, than the rod ever exacted from a slave. . Indeed, slavery itself 
showed by the occasional instances of tyranny, which occurred, that fear 
was an inadequate principle; the rod by itself never secured industry 
and prosperity on a plantation ; but the best examples of success were 



144 SYLLABUS AKD NOTES 

always those where kindness was chiefly relied on, (with a just and 
firm authority,) to awaken in the slaves affection and cheerful devotion. 
The sick husband receives from his wife, without wages, nursing more 
assiduous than any hire can extort from the mercenary professional 
nurse. And, above all, does the infant, helpless to reward or punish, 
exact from the mother's love and pity, a service more punctilious and 
toilsome, than was ever rendered to an eastern sultan by the slave with 
the scimetar over his head. 

Suppose, thenfc that the all-powerful Spirit of G-od, employing the 
delightful truths of gospel grace as His instrument, produces in be- 
lievers a love aud gratitude as genuine as these instinctive affections, 
and more sacred and strong as directed towards a nobler object, has He 
not here a spring of obedience as much more, efficacious as it is more 
generous than the legalists? 

" Talk they of morals? Thou bleeding Love, 
The great morality is love to Thee ! " 

When, therefore, these heretics object, that justification by free 
grace will have licentious results; God's answer is, that He will pro- 
vide against that, by making the faith which justifies also a principle 
of life, which " works by love." 



LECTXJKE LIIL 



SYLLABUS. 
REPENTANCE. 

1. What two kinds of repentance are distinguished in Scripture, and by what 
words ? Are they ever used interchangeably ? 

Conf. of Faith, ch. xv. Sampson on Hebrews, 12, 17. Hill, Bk. v, ch- 4, 
§ 1. Calvin, Inst., Bk. iii, ch. 3. Knapp, § 126. Watson, ch. xxiv, § 1. 

2. What do divines mean by legal, and what by evangelical repentance ? 
Ridgeley, que. 76. Calvin, as above. 

3. Of what should we repent ? 

4. Who is the author of repentance ; and does it precede or follow regene- 
ration ? 

Calvin, as above. Ridgeley, as above. Watson's Inst., ch. xxiv. 

5. What are the relations between Faith and Repentance, and which is prior 
in the order of production? 

Calvin, as above, §1,2. Fuller on Sandeman, Letter v. Watson, as above. 

6. Is repentance atoning ? 

Calvin, Bk. iii, ch. 4. Knapp, § 128. Watson, as above, and ch. xix. 

7. What are the proper fruits of repentance ? 

See Ridgeley and Calvin, as above. 

I. "Repentance unto Life is an evangelical grace, the doctrine 
whereof is to be preached by every minister of the gospel, as well as 
that of faith in Christ." Conf. xv, 1. The brevity, and in some oases 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 145 

neglect, with which this prominent subject is treated by many systems, 
is surprising and reprehensible. 

Definition of terms. — In the New Testament there are two classes 
of words, used for two exercises, both of which, in the English version 
are called " repentance," " repent." One class is metamelomai, meta- 
meleia, the other, metanoeo, metanoia. The one means etymologi- 
cally, after regret, a merely natural feeling; the other, change of mind, 
after conduct. And the two classes are used in the New Testament 
with general, or, as 1 would assert, universal discrimination. (The 
only alleged cases of confusion are Matt, xxi : 32; Luke xvii : 3,4; 
Heb. xii : 17. In the first, the verb is metemelethete, with accurate 
and proper reference to the relation between carnal conviction and 
sorrow, and turning to Christ, as a preparation for the result. Those 
expositors who will have metamelomai used here for evangelical 
repentance, urge, that this alone is vitally connected with saving faith. 
The chief priests "repented not that they might believe." But give 
the verb its ordinary meaning: Christ charges on them such obduracy, 
and self-sufficiency, that they felt not even that carnal sorrow, which 
is the preliminary step towards true repentance, faith, and conversion. 
Thus, so far is the ordinary sense from being difficult here, it adds 
great force to our Saviour's meaning. So in the next case. Luke 
xvii ; 3, 4. In this metanoia is used for the professed repentance of 
an erring, and even a very unstable brother, to show that his profession, 
so long as it is not absolutely discredited by his bad conduct, is to be 
taken by the judgment of charity, (1 Cor. xiii : 7,) as evidence of 
genuine, Christian sorrow, so far as to secure forgiveness. A profes- 
sion of mere carnal sorrow would not entitle to it. In the third, the 
best commentators are agreed that Topon metanoias refers to a change 
in Isaac, which the historian indicates, must have been (whatever pro- 
fane Esau may have hoped) Christian conviction of, and sorrow for error ; 
(otherwise he would not have changed his prophecy.) Now, when we see 
that metanoeo is used in the New Testament 34, and metanoia 24 
times=58, and metamelomai, and family, 7 times, the demarcation 
made by the sacred writers is very broad. 

See this distinction carried out with instructive accuracy in 2 Cor. 
vii : 8-10, (original.) 

In the Old Testament two families of words are used for those acts 
promiscuously expressed in our English version by Repent ; shoobh, and 
its derivatives, and nacham, with its derivatives. The latter is used to 
express both regret and repentance proper, (variously translated by 
Sept.;) the former, I believe, in its theological uses, always expresses 
true repentance. 

The Latin Vulgate has lent us a mischievous legacy, in giving us the 
word "repent" as the rendering of metanoein. "Repentance" is from 
poenitet, poena ; and that from the Greek word poine. Its English 
progency is seen in the word pain; and its original idea is penalty. 
See the use of poena; Iphigenia in aulidc, for expiatory penalty. 
No wonder the Latin Church, in the dark ages, slid into the error of 
regarding penance, as a satisfaction for the guilt of sin ; when it had 
been taught to call metaxoia by such a misnomer as poenitentia. Lac- 
tantius, (the most elegant in his Latinity, of the Christian fathers,) 
proposes to render it by Resipiscentia, (from re°sapio.) "Ideo que 



146 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Graeci melius et significantius metanotan dicunt, quam nos possumus 
resipiscentiam dicere." 

I wish that the English tongue had enabled our version to distin- 
guish the two exercises uniformly by two distinct words. 

Metameleia is the natural pain consequent on sin, arising in the car- 
nal mind, either with or without the common convincing influences of 
the Holy Ghost, and contains two elements, fear and dread of the dan- 
ger incurred, and remorse or involuntary self- condemnation of con- 
science denouncing the sin. Tt is a purely selfish emotion; but it is 
still the emotion of a moral nature, and implies a conscience; though 
compatible with an entire preference of will for sin. 

METANOiAis: (See Shorter Cat., que. 87. Quote ans. 87. Conf., 
xv, § 2.) It involves the two elements of the former; but it includes 
chiefly another; viz: "a sight and sense of the filthiness and odious- 
ness of his sins, as contrary to the holy nature, and righteous law of 
God.''' There is not only that painful sense of wrong doing inflicted 
by conscience on the sinner; conscience, which a depraved will, al- 
though fully set on transgression, cannot corrupt nor wholly silence. 
But there is the pain arising from a true hatred of sin now exist- 
ing in the will, as a moral disposition and principle, and from the 
preference for, and love of conformity to God, arising out of a thorough 
approval of, and complacency in His moral perfection. Of course, 
this hatred of sinfulness and appetency of holiness, are not two prin- 
ciples, but one, expressing its spontaneous nature as to two opposite 
objects — sin and righteousness. And last, that view of the odious- 
ness of sin, and attractiveness of godliness proceeds chiefly in the be- 
liever's experiences, from the cross: from the exhibitions of mercy, 
purity, goodness, and hope there made. True repentance may be 
defined as the moral emotion and act of the regenerate nature towards 
its personal sinfulness, and towards godliness, especially as the two are 
exhibited in the Cross. 

II. Legal Kepentance what? — The terms Legal and Evangelical 
Repentance have been used by divines with a mischievous uncertainty. 
By some, legal repentance is defined as though dentical with metame- 
leia. If this were really the distinction, the terms would be unneces- 
sary. Paul gives us better ones in 2 Cor. vii : 10: The "sorrow of 
the world," and "Godly sorrow." But other divines, perceiving a 
truer and more accurate distinction in the actings of Godly sorrow it- 
self, have employed the phrases in a useful sense. These, by legal 
repentance, mean a genuine sorrow for sin, including both fear of its 
dangers, and conscience of its wrongnoss, and also loathing of its 
odiousness, with a thorough justifying and approving of God's holy 
law; a sorrow wrought by the Holy Ghost, but wrought by Him only 
through the instrumentality of the convincing Law, and unaccompa- 
nied with conscious hopes of mercy in Christ. By Evangelical Re- 
pentance they mean that godly sorrow for sin, which is wrought by the 
renewing Spirit, including the above actings, but also, and chiefly, the 
tender sorrow combined with hopes of mercy proceeding from appro- 
priating faith, when the believer "looks on Him whom he hath pierced," 
and sees there at once a blessed way of deliverance, and a new illus- 
tration of God's love, and his own aggravated vileness. This, in a 
word, is the repentance of the Catechism, que. 87. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 147 

ITT. Do we repent of Original Sin? — In completing our view of 
the nature of repentance, the question presents itself: Of what should 
man repent? The general ansirer, of course, must be: Of all sin. Is 
it man's duty, then, to repent of original sin? If we say, no, the 
Arminian will press us with this consequence : "If it is not your per- 
sonal duty to repent of it, you imply that you are not in earnest in 
saying that it is truly and properly sin." Yet, how can a man feel 
personally blameworthy (an essential element of repentance) for an act 
committed by another, without his consent, and before he was born? 
" The sinfulness of that estate into which man fell, consists in the 
guilt of Adam's first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the 
corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original 
sin." The Christian will, of course, regret the guilt of Adam's first 
sin, but not repent of it. But of the corruption of nature, of the 
concupiscence and inordinate desire of our hearts, it is our duty to 
repent, to feel blameworthy for them, to sorrow for, and to strive against 
them, just as of actual transgression ; for this is not only our guilt, 
(imputed,) but our proper sin. 

Of particular Sins? — Again, Conf., xv, § 5, men ought not only 
to repent of their sinfulness, both of heart and life, as a general qual- 
ity, but also of particular sins, so far as they are known, with a par- 
ticular repentance. Repentance is the medium of sanctiftcation, and 
sin is only conquered by us in detail. There is no other way for a 
finite creature to fight the good fight of faith. Hence, it is obvious, 
every conscious, and especially every known reeent transgression should 
be made the subject of particular repentanee. The impenitent man 
cannot be forgiven. What, then, shall we answer concerning those 
unconscious and forgotten transgressions (probably the "secret sins" 
of Ps. xix: 12,) to which the attention and recollection of even the 
honest penitent never advert, in consequence of the limitation of his 
faculties and powers? We answer, that each Christian is aware of his 
guilt of these forgotten faults, and grieves over the general fact that 
he has them. And this general repentance is accepted ; so that the 
atonement of Christ blots them out of God's book of remembrance. 

After this definition of Repentanee, it need hardly be added, that it 
is not only an act, to be performed at the beginning of conversion, 
and then to be dismissed as complete, but also a life long work, pro- 
ceeding from an abiding temper of soul. The saint is a penitent, 
until he reaches heaven. 

IV. Repentance fruit of New Birth. — If we confound worldly 
with godly sorrow, or if we take a Pelagian view of human nature, we 
may indeed ascribe true repentanee to the unaided workings of the 
natural heart. But if repentanee is understood as above, we shall see 
that while it is a duty for man to exercise, it is still one to which he 
must be moved by the supernatural grace of Grod. Hence, the Scrip- 
tures always represent it as God's gift or work. See New Testament 
first, as plainest: Acts v: 31 ; xi : 18; 2 Tim. ii : 25. In Old Testa- 
ment: Ps. lxxx: 3,7, 19; lxxxv : 4; Jer. xxxi : 18; Ezek. xi : 19. 
Nor can these texts be evaded by saying, that G-od is the Author of 
repentance only mediately, by teaching that gospel which inculcates 
and prompts repentance. In several of them, those who are already 



148 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

possessed of the gospel means pray to God to work repentance in them ; 
and in 2 Tim. ii: 25, there is a "peradventure" whether God will 
give a heart to repent, to those to whom Timothy was to give the 
light • showing that the grace of repentance is a separate and divine 
gift. 

But let anyone look at the Scriptural definition of Repentance, and 
he will be convinced that none but a regenerate heart is competent to 
the exercise. The true penitent not only feels the danger of his sins, 
and the involuntary sting of a conscience which he would disarm if he 
could, but an ingenuous sorrow for the sinfulness of his sin, and a sin- 
cere desire for godliness. Can any one feel this but a regenerate soul? 
Can he who hates God thus grieve for having wounded His holy law ; 
can he who loves sin as the native food of his soul, thus loathe it for 
its own sake? No one feels godly sorrow, but he who is passed from 
death unto life. 

Arminian objections to this. Answer. — But the Arminians, 
while avowing that repentance is the work of the Holy Ghost, assert 
that it must be held to begin before regeneration in the order of pro- 
duction, as they also hold concerning faith and justification. Their 
reasons are two. First: we are taught, (e. g., Ps. Ii : 10,) to pray for 
regeneration. But prayer, to be acceptable, must be sincere ; and a 
sincere request for a holy heart implies, or presupposes, repentance 
for ungodliness. And second : repentance must be presupposed in 
faith, because to fly to Christ as a refuge from sin presupposes a sense 
of sin. But justification, secured by faith, must precede regeneration ; 
because God cannot be supposed to bestow the beginning of commu- 
nion in the Holy Ghost, and what is substantially eternal li?e, on a 
rebel before he is reconciled to Him. Thus, they suppose Born, vii to 
describe repentance ; Rom. vii : 24, 25, the dawnings of saving faith ; 
Rom. viii: 1, first clause, the justification consequent thereon; and 
viii : 1, last clause, the beginning of spiritual life. Now, to both ob- 
jections, we reply that their plausibility is chiefly due to the oversight 
of this fact, that the priority of one over another of these several steps 
is only one of production, or causation, and not of time, Practically, 
every one who is regenerate is then in principle, penitent, and believ- 
ing, and justified. And since all parts are of God's grace, is it not 
foolish to say that His righteousness or His wrath forbids Him to be- 
stow this before that, seeing His grace permits neither to precede in 
time, and none to be lacking? But on the first objection we remark, 
farther, if we must needs rationalize about it, it is at least as great an 
anomaly that a man should feel a sincere desire for godliness, while 
his nature remained prevalently ungodly, as it is that an ungodly 
prayer for a new heart should be answered by the beart-searching God. 
The objection derives its seeming force from a synergistic theory of 
Regeneration. But, in truth, no true spiritural desire can exist till 
God has actually renewed the will. God must do the work, not man. 
And God must savingly begin it, unasked by man. This is sovereign 
grace. That a man should hold this theory, and yet pray for a new 
heart, is no greater paradox than that the hope our sins are pardoned 
should encourage us to pray for pardon. The truth is, the instincts of 
a pre-existent spiritual life find their natural'expression in a breathing 
after spiritual life. To the second objection, we reply: if it seems 






OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 149 

anomalous that God should anticipate His reconciliation to the con- 
demned sinner, by bestowing that gift of a new heart, which virtually 
constitutes eternal life, it would be equally anomalous that He should 
anticipate the bestowal of peace, by bestowing those essential gifts of 
faith and repentance, to which eternal blessedness is inevitably tied 
by the gospel. Must not the Arminian, just as much as the Calvinist, 
fall back, for his solution of these difficulties, upon the glorious fact, that 
Christ hath deserved all these saving gifts for His people ? To him 
who believes an unconditional election, there is no difficulty here ; be- 
cause he believes that these saving gifts are all pledged to the believ- 
ing sinner, not only before he fulfils any instrumental conditions, but 
before he is born. There is no difficulty in it all to God ; because all 
is of grace. 

V. Which precedes; faith or repentance? — The relations of 
faith and repentance inter se, as to the order of production, are impor- 
tant to an understanding of conversion. Both these graces are the 
exercises of a regenerate heart alone ; they presuppose the new birth. 
Now, Calvin, with perhaps the current of Calvinistic divines, says, that 
" repentance not only immediately follows faith, but is produced by it." 
Again : " When we speak of faith as the origin of repentance, we 
dream not of any space of time which it employs in producing it ; 
but we intend to signify that a man cannot truly devote himself to re- 
pentance, unless he knows himself to be of God." And this, he adds, 
only becomes known by appropriating faith. The view usually urged 
is, that the convicted sinner cannot exercise that tender and affection- 
ate sorrow for sin, which involves a true love to God, until he enter- 
tains some hope that God loves him, in Christ. They quote such 
passages as Ps. cxxx : 4; 1 Jno. iv : 19. Before hope of mercy 
dawns, they argue, there can be nothing but stubborn remorse and de- 
spair, after the example of Jer. xviii : 12. Now, there is a fair sense 
in which all this is true; and that no doubt the sense in which it com- 
mended itself to the minds of these great aud good men. But there 
is also a great danger of holding it in an erroneous and mischievous 
sense. In what we have to say, guarding these views, let us premise 
that we make no priority of time in the order of repentance and faith ; 
and no gap of duration between the birth of the one or the other. 
Either implies the other, in that sense. Nor do we dream of the existence 
of such a thing as a penitent unbeliever, nor suppose that there is any 
other means of producing repentance than the preaching of the gospel. 
Repentance can exist nowhere except where God works it. In rational 
adults He works it only by means, and that means is the gospel revela- 
tion ; none other. Nor do we retract one word of what we said as to 
the prime efficiency of the doctrine of the cross, and of the hope, grati- 
tude, love, tenderness, and humiliation, which faith draws therefrom, 
as means for cultivating repentance. But in our view it is erroneous 
to represent faith as existing irrespective of penitence, in its very first 
acting, and as begetting penitence through the medium of hope. On 
the contrary, we believe that the very first acting of faith implies some 
repentance, as the prompter thereof. True, the two twin graces ever 
after stimulate each other reciprocally : the man begins to believe 
because he has also begun to repent. 

Argument. — The reasons are : first, that the other view gives a 



150 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

degrading and mercenary character to repentance: as though the sin- 
ner selfishly conditioned his willingness to feel aright concerning his 
sin, on the previous assurance of impunity. It is as though the con- 
demned felon should say: "Let me go free, and I will sincerely avow 
that I have done very wrong. But if I am to swing for it, I will 
neither acknowledge guilt, nor say, God, bless my country." Is this 
ingenuous repentance? Is this the experience of the contrite heart? 
No; its language always is: (Ps. li, pt. 1 v. 5 :) 

" Should sudden vengeance seize my breath, 

I must pronounce Thee just in death ; 

And if my soul is sent to hell, 

Thy righteous law approves it well." 
Second : Godly sorrow for sin must be presupposed or implied in the 
first actings of faith, because faith embraces Christ as a Saviour from 
sin. See Cat., que. 86, last clause especially. Surely the Scriptures 
do not present Christ to our faith only, or even mainly, as a way of 
impunity. See Matt, i : 21; Acts iii : 26; Titus ii: 14. As we have 
pointed out the most characteristic defect of a dead faith, is, that it 
would quite heartily embrace Christ as God's provision for \immunity 
in sin : but God offers Him to faith for a very different purpose, viz : 
for restoration to holiness, including immunity from wrath as one of 
the secondary consequences thereof. (Hence, we must demur at 
Owen's declaration, that the special object of saving faith is only Christ 
in His priestly, and not in His kingly and prophetic offices.) But now, 
a man does not flee from an evil, except as a consequence of feeling it 
an evil. Hence, there can be no embracing of Christ with the heart, 
as a whole present Saviour, unless sin be felt to be in itself a present 
evil; and there be a genuine desire to avoid it as well as its penalty. 
But does not such a desire imply a renewal of the will? This view 
has appeared so unavoidable to many who go with Calvin, that they 
have admitted, " Legal repentance precedes, but Evangelical repen- 
tance follows faith and hope." (See above, p. 146, bottom.) But 
does not such a legal repentance imply the new birth ? Does any man 
thus justify and revere the very law which condemns him, aod regard 
the Divine character, while devoid as he supposes of hope in its favour, 
with new and adoring approbation, while yet his carnal mind is enmity 
against God? Surely not. The error of their argument is in suppos- 
ing that this legal repentance was the exercise of an unrenewed heart. 
Third: Some passages of Scripture imply the order I have assigned ; 
and I am not aware of any which contradict it. See Mark i : 15 ; 
Actsii: 38; v: 31; xx: 21; 2 Tim. ii : 25, especially the last. 

They are twin graces. — In a word, Repentance and Faith are 
twin graces, both implicitly contained in the gift of the new heart; 
and they cannot but co-exist. Repentance is the right sense and voli- 
tion which the renewed heart has of its sin; faith is the turning of 
that heart from its sin to Christ. Repentance feels the disease, faith 
embraces the remedy. But when we inquire for the first conscious act- 
ing of faith or repentance after the instantof the new birth, the result 
is decided by the object to which the soul happens to be first directed. 
If the object of its first regenerate look be its own ungodliness, the 
first conscious exercise will be one of repentance ; but just so surely as 
the volition is, potentially, in the preponderating motive, so surely 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 151 

does that soul look from its ungodliness to Christ, the remedy of it ; 
it may be unconsciously at first, but in due time consciously. Or if 
Christ be the first object to which the new-born soul looks, its first act 
may be one of trust and joy in Him. Yet that trust implies a sense 
of the evil of sin, as the thing for deliverance from which Christ is 
trusted. 

VI. Repentance not atoning. — The exercise of repentance, while 
absolutely necessary in all who are saved, creates no atoning merit; 
and constitutes no ground whatever in justice, why the penitent ahould 
have remission of his sins. See Conf., xv, 3. The carnal mind here la- 
bours under an obstinate delusion ; and how often are pastors told, 
even by those who desire to profess themselves Christians, "that they 
hope their sins are pardoned, because they have repented V Hence, 
importance. 

Argument. — A moral fitness which demands that no impenitent 
person shall be pardoned, is here mistaken for another thing. Now, 
the ground of that moral fitness is this : that pardon having otherwise 
been made just, God's holiness and majesty may have some practical 
assurance, in the state of the sinner's own feelings, against his repeti- 
tion of his sins. But this end does not express the whole intent of 
God's law; if it did, the law would be a mere expediency, unworthy 
of God. Its true object is, to express and sustain His immutable ho- 
liness. It demands perfect and perpetual obedience. Repentance is 
not obedience. This leads, 

Second, to the remark, that repentance is no reparation whatever 
for past obedience. It cannot place the sinner, in the eye of the law, 
in the position of Him who has never sinned. It has in itself no rele- 
vancy to repairing the mischiefs the sin has inflicted. Thus men judge. 
To the man who had injured you, you would say : Your repentance is 
very proper; but it cannot recall the past, or undo that which is done. 

Third : Indeed, what is a repentance but a feeling of ill-desert, and 
consequent guilt? Confession is its language. Now, can amanjoay 
a just debt by his acknowledgments of its justice? It. is a contradic- 
tion, which would lead us to this absurdity, that the more thoroughly 
unworthy a man felt, the more worthy he would thereby become. 

Fourth: Repentance after transgression is a work. Acts xvii: 30. 
So that justification by repentance would be a justification by works, 
and all the principles of Luke xvii: 10; Rom. iii : 28, apply to it. 

But last: Repentance is much a gift of God (Acts v : 3l,) as the 
remission which it is supposed to purchase. This settles the matter. 
While, therefore, the impenitent cannot be justified, yet the sole 
ground of justification is the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, 
and received by faith alone. 

VII. Fruits meet for Repentance. — The Scriptures command us 
to "bring forth fruits meet for repentance." These fruits will, in 
general, include all holy living; for repentance is a "turning unto 
God from sin, with full purpose of, and endeavour after new obedience." 
But there are certain acts which are essentially dictated by repentance 
and which proceed immediately from the attitude of penitence. 

1. Sincere penitence must lead to confession. " Out of the abun- 
dance of the heart the mouth speaketh." See Prov. xxviii: 13. The 



152 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

highest form of this duty is the confession of all our sins to God, in 
secret prayer. True repentance will always thus utter itself to Him. 
Then, if our sins have scandalized the Church, we must also make 
public confession of the particular sins which have produced this re- 
sult. Again, if our sin is immediately aimed at our fellow-man, and 
known to him, repentance must lead to confession to him. 

2. The next consequence of repentance will be, to prompt us to 
make reparation of our sin, wherever it is practicable. He who truly 
repents, wishes his sin undone. But if he truly wishes it undone, he 
will, of course, undo it, if in his power. 

3. The next fruit of repentance must be holy watchfulness against 
its recurrence. This is too obvious to need proof. See 2 Cor. vii : 11, 
as admirably expounded by Calvin, Institutes, Bk. 3, ch. 3, § 15. 

The worthless distinction of Rome between attrition and contrition, 
and the assigning of a religious value to the former, are sufficiently 
refuted by what precedes. Nor does the duty of auricular confession, 
so called, find any Scriptural support plausible enough to demand dis- 
cussion. As to her ascetical exercises of penitence, they are the in- 
ventions of fanaticism and spiritual pride. The mortification which 
Scripture enjoins, is that of the sins, and not of the unreasoning 
members. 



LECTURE LIV. 



SYLLABUS. 
SANCTIFICATION AND GOOD WORKS. 

1. State the usages and meanings of the original words rendered "sanctify," 
and the nature and extent of sanctiflcation. 

Sh. Cat., que. 35. Conf. of Faith, chs. xiii and xvi. Lexicons. Turret- 
tin, Loc. xvii, que. 1. Dick, Lect. 74. 

2. How is sanctiflcation distinguished from, and how related to, justification 
and regeneration ? 

Turrettin, que. 1, § 9, to end. Dick, as above. Hill, Bk. v, ch. 4, § 2. 
Knapp, § 126, 116. Ridgeley, que. 78. 

3. Who is the Agent, and what the means of sanctiflcation ? 
Dick, Lect. 75. Ridgeley, que. 75. 

4. Is sanctiflcation ever perfect in this life ? Consider the views of Pelagians, 
Socinians, and Wesleyans. 

Turrettin, que. 2. Dick, Lect. 74. Hill, Bk. v, ch. 4, § 3. Ridgeley, 
que. 78. Watson's Theol. Inst., ch. 29. 

I. Sanctify. Definition of. — In discussing this subject, we turn 
again to Scripture to settle the meaning of the word. In the Old 
Testament we find the word kadash used in the piel and hiphil, to ex- 
press sanctiflcation. In its lowest sense, it seems to mean simply sep^ 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 153 

aration to a particular purpose, and that purpose not sacred, as Jer. 
xxii : '7. More frequently it is used in the sense of consecrate, or 
dedicate as priests, utensils, the Sabbath day, where the idea is that 
of setting apart to a holy use. See Exod. xxviii : 41 ; xxix : 36 ; Deut. 
v: 12. Bub in its proper sense, it means to cleanse away ceremonial, 
and especially, moral pollution. 2 Sam. xi : 4; Num. xv: 40. Kin- 
dred to this is the sense where God is said to sanctify Himself, or to 
be sanctified by His people — i. e., declaratively. Ezek. xxxviii: 23. 

Use of word in New Testament. — In the Greek Scriptures hagiadzo 
is used clearly in all the above senses, to separate, to consecrate, to 
purify morally, and to declare God's holiness. There is a use of this 
verb, of which the clearest instances are seen in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, especially ii : 11; x: 10, 14: xiii . 12, compared with i : 3. 
Dr. Sampson here renders the word popularly by "redeem." Sin car- 
ries two consequences — -guilt and pollution— (nearly associated in the 
mind of a Hebrew.) From the former, Christ's blood cleanses, from 
the latter, His Spirit. When Christ is said to "sanctify" us by His 
blood, His sacrifice, &c, it is the former element, cleansing away of 
guilt, which is intended prominently. This is evident from the fact 
that the verb is used by the Septuagint as the rendering for kipper; 
which is strengthened by the fact that the kindred word ratharidzo is 
used for propitiation; e. g., 1 Jno. i: 7. See Sampson on Hebrews, 
i: 3; and ii: 11. 

Sanctification is of the Soul. Proofs. — Sanotification, in the 
gospel sense, means then, not only cleansing from guilt, though it pre- 
supposes this, nor only consecration, though it includes this, nor only 
reformation of morals and life, though it produces this ; but, essen- 
tially, the moral purification of the soul. This is the great idea to 
which all the ceremonial sanctity of the typical dispensation pointed ; 
(see Ps. Ii : 6, 7; xxiv : 4, &c.,) and it is yet more emphatically and 
prominently expressed in the New Testament word hagiadzo. In our 
discussions with Pelagians, we have already shown that their idea is 
erroneous, viz : that holiness can only be acted by man. We have 
proved that there must be a previous spring in the principles of the 
soul, and the dispositions which dictate volitions; otherwise volitions 
formally right can have no true holiness. Outward reformation can- 
not, then, be sanctification, because the former can only be the conse- 
quence thereof; as is well stated in Turrettin, and is clearly implied 
by Matt, xii : 33, 34, &c. This important practical truth may be 
farther supported by considering, b.) that holiness in man must be con- 
ceived as the counterpart of sin. (The Pelagian admits this.) But 
sin is both original and actual. Sin of heart is the fountain of the 
sin of life. Hence, it is fair to infer, as our Saviour does, in fact, in 
the places cited, that sanctification has its seat in the heart, c.) This 
appears also by the fact, which none will deny, that infants may be 
subjects of sanctification. They cannot act a sanctification. d.) Again, 
the synonymous phrases all speak of "a clean heart," of "circumcising 
the heart " &c. And last, the Scriptures are emphatic in their asser- 
tions. 1 Thess. v: 23; Eph. iv : 23,24; Gal. v: 24; Titus iii: 5; 
Lukexvii: 21; Rom. xiv: 17. 

Sanctification is of the whole Person. In what sense of 
other farts than the heart? — When we inquire after the extent 



154 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

of sanctification, or the parts of the human person affected by it, the 
Catechism answers, that we are renewed "in the whole man." In 1 
Thess. v: 23, the Apostle expresses the same idea of completeness, by 
employing the three comprehensive terms of the Platonic psychology 
current in his day, (not meaning to endorse that scheme.) Now, when 
we analyse that element of human character and of human action, in 
which moral quality resides, we are compelled to say that, strictly 
speaking, it is only in the state and actings of man's active powers. 
If there is neither emotional activity nor choice involved in any human 
act, that act has no moral character. Hence, in strictness of speech, 
the true seat of sanctification is the will : the human soul in that class 
of its actings expressed in Scripture by the word heart. But the Apos- 
tle is writing popularly, and not scientifically. The emotional and 
voluntary capacity of the soul is not a different member, or department 
of it, from the intellectual. It is the one indivisible unit, acting in 
different modes. 

The Soul has no parts. — It is the soul which is sanctified, and not 
a faculty thereof. True, that sanctification is only a moral change of 
the soul, in its essence; but in its results, it modifies every acting of 
the soul, whether through intellect, appetite, or corporeal volition. 
Every one would consider that he was speaking with sufficient accuracy 
in using the words "a wicked thought." Now, in the same sense in 
which a thought can be wicked, in that sense the power of thinking can 
be sanctified. What is that sense ? A thought is wicked, not because 
the faculty of thinking, or pure intellection, is the seat of moral qual- 
ity, abstractly considered ; but because the soul that thinks, gives to 
that thought, by the concurrence of its active or emotional, or volun- 
tary power, a complex character, in which complex there is a wrong 
moral element. To sanctify the intellect, then, is to sanctify the soul 
in such way that in its complex acts, the moral element shall be right 
instead of wrong. So we speak, with entire propriety of "a wicked 
bloio." The bones, skin, and muscles, which corporeally inflicted it, 
are the unreasoning and passive implement of the soul that emitted the 
volition to strike. But our members are sanctified, when the volitions 
which move them are holy; and when the impressions, or sense and 
appetite, of which they are the inlets, become the occasions of no 
wrong feelings or volitions. 

Sanctification of the body not Asceticism. — The sanctification 
of our bodies consists, therefore, not in the ascetic mortification of our 
nerves, muscles, glands, &c, but in the employment of the members 
as the implements of none but holy volitions, and in such management 
and regulations of the senses, that they shall be the inlets of no objec- 
tive, or occasional causes of wrong feeling. This will imply, of course, 
strict temperance, continence, and avoidance of temptation to the sin- 
ful awakening of appetite, as well as the preservation of muscular 
vigour, and healthy activity, by self-denial and bodily hardihood. See 
1 Cor. ix: 27: 2 Pet. ii : 14; Jas. iii: 2. But the whole theory of 
asceticism is refuted by the simple fact, that the soul is the seat of 
holiness; and that the bo.,y is only indirectly holy or unholy, as it is 
the tool of the soul. The whole delusion, so far as it has sought a 
Scriptural support, resU on the mistake of the meaning of the word 



OF LECTURES IX THEOLOGY. 155 

"flesh," "caro" "sarx," which the sacred writers use to mean depraved 
human nature ; not the body. What those fleshly members are, which 
sanctification mortifies, may be seen in Col. iii : 5. 

II. Relation of sanctification to New Birth and Justifica- 
tion — Sanctification only matures what regeneration began. The lat- 
ter sprouted the seed of grace, the former continues its growth, until 
there appears first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in 
the ear. The agent and influences are therefore the same. 

In the order of production, justification precedes sanctification ; for 
one of the benefits received by the justified believer, in virtue of his 
acceptance, is sanctifying grace* While the two graces are practically 
inseparable, still their discrimination is of the highest importance; 
for it is by confounding the two that Rome has re-introduced her the- 
ory of justification, by self-righteousness. Hence, let the student re- 
member, that the results of the two graces are different. Justification 
removes the guilt of sin, sanctification its pollution. Justification 
changes only our legal relations, sanctification our actual moral condi- 
tion. Justification is an act, sanctification is a process; the one is in- 
stantaneous and complete in all,thne other is imperfect in its degree in 
all, unequal in different Christia s, and is increased throughout life. 
Justification takes place in God's court, sanctification in the sinner's 
own breast. 

Sanctification essential to Salvation. — The necessary and uni- 
form connexion between the two has been argued substantially in the 
last lecture on Justification, and to that the student is referred. But 
the proposition is of such prime importance that it will not be amiss, 
in closing this bead, to state the points of our argument in somewhat 
different order. 

a.) The Covenant of Grace embraces both. Jer. xxxi : 33; Rom. 
viii: 30. 

b.) The sanctity of the divine nature requires it. 1 Pet. i: 15, 16. 

c.) The conuexion appears inevitable from the offices of Christ; for 
He is King, as well as Priest, to all His people. Rom. viii : 29 ; vi : 
11; Titus ii: 14; Rom. viii : 1,2. 

d.) The office of the Holy Ghost shows this connexion ; for His in- 
fluences are a part of Christ's purchase. But He is the Spirit of holi- 
ness. Rom. viii : 9. 

e.) The sacraments symbolize cleansing from pollution as well as 
from guilt. Col. ii ; 11, 12; Titus iii: 5. 

f.) Redemption would be a mockery without sanctification ; for sin 
itself, and not the external wrath of God,.is the cause of misery here, 
and eternal death hereafter. Hence, to deliver the fallen son of Adam, 
from his guilt, and leave him under the power of corruption, would be 
no salvation. 

Last: the chief ultimate end of redemption, which is God's glory, 
(Rom. si: 36; Is. Ixi : 3; Eph. i: 6,) would be utterly disappointed, 
were believers not required to depart from all sin. For God's holiness, 
His consummate attribute, would be tarnished by taking to His favour 
polluted creatures. This point suggests, also, the second, where God 
points to Eis own perfect holiness as the reason for the purification of 
His people. No argument could be plainer. An unholy creature has 
no place in the favour and bosom of a holy God. 



156 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Faith embraces Christ in all His offices. — To return a moment 
to the third point, I would add on it a remark which I omitted in order 
to avoid interrupting the outline. The selfishness and guilty con- 
science of man prompt him powerfully to look to the Saviour exclu- 
sively as a remedy for guilt, even when awakened by the Spirit. The 
first and most urgent want of the soul, convicted of its guilt and dan- 
ger, is impunity. Hence, the undue prevalence, even in preaching, of 
that view of Christ, which holds Him up as Atonement only. We have 
seen that even an Owen could be guilty of what I regard as the dan- 
gerous statement, that the true believer, in embracing Christ, first 
received Him only in His priestly office ! The faith which does no 
more than this, is but partial, and can bear but spurious fruits. Is 
not this the explanation of much of that defective and spurious reli- 
gion with which the Church is cursed? The man who is savingly 
wrought upon by the Holy Ghost, is made to feel that his bondage 
under corruption is an evil as inexorable and dreadful as the penal curse 
of the law. He needs and desires Christ in His prophetic and kingly 
offices, as much as in His priestly. His faith " receives Him as He is 
offered to us in the gospel;" that is, as a "Saviour of His people from 
their sins." 

III. Agent op sanctification in one sense the Father, and 
the Son, but specially the Spirit. — The Scriptures attribute sanc- 
tification so often to Cod, as in 1 Thess. v: 23, that it is hardly neces- 
sary to set about collecting proofs. The sense in which He is the 
Author of the grace has been indicated, when we said that sanctifica- 
tion is but the continuance of the process of which regeneration is the 
initiation. If regeneration is supernatural, and by a mysterious, but 
real and almighty operation, more than the moral suasion of the truth, 
then sanctification is the result of the same kind of agency. The 
proper and immediate Agent is the Holy Ghost, as appears from Ps. 
li : 11 ; Jno. xvi : 8, 9; 2 Thess. ii : 13, &c, &c. This work is also 
attributed to the Son, in 1 Cor. i ; 30, &c; and this not merely in the 
sense of the Epistle to the Hebrews, (hagiadzo,) because His righteous- 
ness is there mentioned distinctly. Now, Christ is our Sanctifier, 
because He procures the benefit for us by His justifying righteousness; 
because He is now the Cod of Providence, and Dispenser of means to 
His people ; and because, by His perpetual intercession, He procures 
and dispenses the influences of the Holy Ghost to us, who proceedeth 
from the Father and the Son. The Father is also spoken of as our 
Sanctifier; e. g., Jno. xvft : 17, because He stands in the Covenant of 
Grace as the Representative of the whole Trinity, and is the. Devisor 
of the whole gracious means, and the Sender of the Son and Holy 
Ghost. 

The means three. — While the agency in sanctification is super- 
natural, and the inscrutable indwelling and operation of the Holy 
Ghost are required, not only to initiate, but to continue growth in 
grace, yet He operates through means usually. And these means may 
be said comprehensively to be God's truth, His ordinances, and His 
providence. Such passages as Ps. xix : 1-7, plainly show that not 
only God's revealed word, but His truth seen through the works of 
nature, may sanctify the believer. But there is no reason to suppose 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 157 

that these truths of Natural Theology have any sanctifying agency, 
where they are not confirmed and enlarged by revelation. While 
truth has no adequate efficiency to sanctify by itself; yet it has a nat- 
ural adaptation to be the means of sanctification in the hand of the 
Holy Ghost. For it is religious truth which presents all the objective 
causes of holy exercises and acts. That man's, active powers may be 
holily exercised, an object of acting is needed, as well as a power of 
acting. Thus in natural vision. Now, religious truth presents that 
whole body of theological facts, of examples, of inducements, of ex- 
ternal motives, by which the soul is incited to act. By the ordinances, 
we mean God's worship and sacraments; for the preaching of the word 
comes more properly under the former head. Worship is a sanctifying 
means, because the petitions there offered are the appointed medium 
for receiving grace ; and because all the parts of worship give expression 
and exercise, and thus growth to holy principles. The sacraments are 
means whereby God symbolizes and seals to us the same truths ex- 
pressed verbally in Revelation. They are, therefore, a kind of acted 
instead of spoken word, bringing to the soul, in a still more lively 
manner, those views of truth, which the Holy Ghost makes the occa- 
sion, or objective cause of holy exercises. 

Last, God's providences, both prosperous and adverse, are powerful 
means of sanctification, because they impress religious truth, and force 
it home, by operating, with the word and Holy Ghost, on our natural 
emotions. See Ps. cxix: 71 ; Heb. xii ; 10 ; Rom. ii : 4. But it should 
be remarked, that two things must concur for the sanctifying effect of 
Providences — the light of the word on the Providences to interpret 
them and give them their meaning, and the agency of the Holy Ghost 
inclining the heart to embrace the truths they serve to impress. Mere 
suffering has no holiness in it. 

But the Word is the means in the other instruments — Look- 
ing back, we now see that there is a sense in which the Revealei Word 
is the uniform means of sanctification. It gives fulness and authority 
to Natural Theology. It guides, authorizes, and iustructs our worship. 
It is symbolized in the sacraments. And it shines through the Provi- 
dences, which do but illustrate it. So that the Word is the means, 
after all, in all other means. Jno. xvii : 17. Where the Word is not, 
there is no holiness. 

Repentance and Faith mother graces. — Now, there are two 
graces, by whose intervention the efficacy of all these means of sanc- 
tification is always mediated to the soul. In other words, these two 
graces are the media through which all other means come in efficacious 
contact with the soul. They may therefore be called the mother graces 
of all the others. They are Repentance and Faith. It is only when 
an objective motive is apprehended by a full and active behff, that it 
becomes the occasional cause of any act of the soul. A hundred illus- 
trations are at hand which show that this is universally true, and as 
true in man's carnal as in his spirtual life. Belief is the instigator of 
action. But in order that belief may instigate action, the object be- 
lieved must be so related to the affections of the mind that there shall 
be appetency and repulsion. In the case of saving faith, that relation 
is repentance — i. e., the active affections of the regenerate soul as to 



158 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

holiness and sin, and the means for attaining the one and shunning the 
other. The student may now understand why God gives these graces 
su^h prominence in practical religion. They are the media for the 
exercise of all others. It follows, obviously, that repentance and faith 
must be in perpetual exercise during the whole progress of sanctifi- 
cation. 

IV. Wesleyan Doctrine of Sinless perfection. — Ithasbeen a ques- 
tion lcmg mooted between Evangelical Christians, and Pelagians, Socin- 
ians, Jesuits, and Wesleyans, whether sanctification is ever perfect in this 
life. The Pelagians and Socinians "had an interest to assert that it 
maybe; because such an opinion is necessary to establish their doc- 
trine of justification by works; the Jesuits, in order to uphold the 
possibility of "merits of supererogation;" and the Wesleyans, to sus- 
tain the mystico-fanatical type of religion which they foster. As we 
have, practically, most to do with Wesleyans, on this point, and they 
reproduce the arguments of the others, let us address ourselves to their 
views. They assert that it is scriptural to expect some cases of perfect 
sanctification in this life ; because, 1. The means provided by God are 
confessedly adequate to this complete result, should He please to bless 
them ; and that it seems derogatory to His holy character when He as- 
sures us that "this is the will of God, even our sanctification," to 
suppose He will not hear and answer prayers for a blessing on those 
means, to any extent to which the faith of His children may urge those 
prayers. And 2. He has actually commanded us to pray for entire 
sanctification. Ps. cxix : 5, 6. Surely, He does not cause the seed of 
Jacob to seek Him in vain 1 3. Not only has He thus encouraged, but 
commanded us to seek perfection. See Matt, v : 48. Unless obedience 
were possible, the command would be unjust. And 4. Perfect sancti- 
fication is nowhere connected with the death of the body by explicit 
texts. Indeed, the opinion that it must be, smacks of gnosticism, by 
representing that the seat of ungodliness is in the corporeal part, 
whereas, we know that the body is but the passive tool of the respon- 
sible spirit. As to the involuntary imperfections which every man 
not insanely vain must acknowledge, they are not properly sin ; for God 
does not hold man guilty for those infirmities which are the inevitable 
results of his feeble and limited nature. Here the Wesleyan very 
manifestly implies a resort to the two Pelagian principles: that man 
is not responsible for his volitions unless they are free not only from 
co-action, but from certainty ; and that moral quality resides only in 
acts of choice, so that a volition which is prevalently good is wholly 
good. Hence, those imperfections in saints, into which they fall through 
mere inattention, or sudden gust of temptation, contrary to their sin- 
cere bent and preference, incur no guilt whatever. Last : They claim 
actual cases in Scripture, as of Noah, Gen. vi : 9; Ps. cxix : 1; Job 
i: 1; David; Ps. xxxvii : 37; Zechariah ; Luke i: 6; 1 Jno. iii : 9. 
No Bible Saint perfect. — We reply: Perfection is only predi- 
cated of these saints, to show that they had Christian sincerity ; that 
they bad all the graces essential to the Christian character in actual 
exercise. As if to refute the idea of their sinless perfection, Scrip- 
ture in every case records of them some fault, drunkenness of Noah, 
lying of Abraham, adultery and murder of David, unbelief of Zecha- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 159 

riah, -while Job concludes by saying, "I abhor myself, and repent in 
dust and ashes." 

Pelagian features. — The most objectionable trait about this the- 
ory of perfect sanctification, is its affinities to Jesuitism and Pelagian- 
ism. These are several ways manifest. We saw that the old Pela- 
gians, admitting that a complete obedience is requisite for a justification 
by works, claimed that the obedience which is formally in strict ac- 
cordance with the statute, and prevalently right in purpose, is perfectly 
right. We saw, also, how they defended this view in consistency with 
their false ethicks. For they place the moral quality of acts in the 
volition, denying any certain efficiency to subjective (as to objective) 
motive. Now, volition is, of course, an entire and single act. The 
motives of a single volition may be complex ; but the volition has a 
perfect unicity. Hence, if the morality of the act is wholly in the 
volition, and not in those complex motives, if the purpose is right, it 
is wholly right. But say, with us, that the volition derives its moral 
quality from the subjective motives, (which is the doctrine of common 
sense and the Bible, ) and it follows that a volition may have a complex 
moral character; it may be prevalently right, and yet not perfectly 
right. And such is, obviously, the true character of the obedience of 
the regenerate. Now, note how the Wesleyans reproduce this Pelagian 
result, in their definition of what their perfect sanctification is. So, 
their reduction of those transgressions, to which the saint is hurried 
by sudden temptation, against his prevalent purpose, to the rank of 
mere infirmities, is sheer Pelagianism again. 

There is also a dangerous affinity between these principles, and those 
horrible deductions from Pelagianism, made by the Jesuits, under the 
name of the art of "directing the attention," and venial sins. The 
origin is in the same speculations of those early heretics. The student 
may see an account and refutation in the unrivalled Provincial Letters 
of Blaise Pascal. It is not charged that the Wesleyans countenance 
any of these immoral and loathesome conclusions ; but their premises 
are dangerous, as appears from these results. 

Refutation. — To proceed : it is true that the Bible does not say, 
in so many words, that the soul's connexion with the present body is 
what makes sanctification necessarily incomplete. But it asserts the 
equivalent truth ; as when it teaches us, that at death the saints are 
made perfect in holiness. It is no Gnosticism, but Scripture and com- 
mon sense, to attribute some obstacles to entire sanctification to the 
continuance of the animal appetites in man. While God's omnipo- 
tence could overcome those obstacles, yet it is according to His manner 
of working, that He has seen fit to connect the final completeness of 
His work of grace in the soul, with this last change. Hence, when the 
Scripture shows that this is His plan, we are prepared to believe it so. 

Command not the measure of ability. — God commands us, says 
the Wesleyan, to "be perfect, even as our Father in heaven is perfect," 
whence its possibility must follow. I reply, True ; God cannot require 
of us a physical impossibility. But our inability to keep God's whole 
law perfectly is not physical. It began in man's sin. By that sin we 
lost none of those faculties which, when Adam's will was right, enabled 
him to keep God's commands without sin. Our impotency is an " ina- 



160 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

bility of will." Hence, it ought not to alter the demands of God's 
justice on His creatures. It is right in God to require perfection of 
us, and instruct us to seek it, because His own perfect nature can ac- 
cept no less. Did God allow an inability of will to reduce His just 
claims on the creature, then the more sinful he became, the less guilt 
would attach to his shortcomings. A creature need only render him- 
self utterly depraved to become completely irresponsible ! 

None sinless. Proofs. — But we argue, affirmatively, that sancti- 
fication is never complete in this life : a.) Because the Scripture says 
expressly that remains of sin exists in all living men. See, for instance, 
1 Jno. i: 8; Jas. iii : 2; 1 Kings viii : 46; Prov. xx : 9. How can 
such assertions be evaded? 

b.) I argue it, also, from the perpetual warfare, which the Scriptures 
say is going on between the flesh and the Spirit. See Rom. vii : 10, 
to end ; Gal. v: 17, &c. This warfare, says the Bible, constitutes the 
Christian life. And it is of no avail for the Wesleyan to attempt evading 
this picture of Rom. vii, as the language of Paul convicted but not yet 
converted ; for other similar passages remain, as Rom. viii : 7 ; Gal. v : 
17 ; Phil, iii : 13 ; 1 Tim. vi ; 12, &c, &c. Now, as long as the contest 
lasts, there must be an enemy, c.) The impossibility of a perfect obe- 
dience by ransomed men is clearly asserted in Scripture. Ps. cxix : 
96 ; A.cts xv : 10. It is true, that in the latter place the ceremonial law 
is more immediately in Peter's view; but the whole law is included, as 
is obvious from his scope ;and if either could be perfectly kept, surely the 
ceremonial would be the easier. Last : The Lord's Prayer teaches all 
Christians to pray for the pardon of sin; a command which would not 
be universally appropriate if this doctrine were true. And if human 
experience can settle such a p>oint, it is wholy on our side; for those 
who are obviously most advanced in sanctification, both among inspired 
and uninspired saints, are most emphatic in their confessions of short- 
coming ; while those who arrogantly claim perfect sanctification, 
usually discredit their pretentions sooner or later, by shameful fails. 
It is well that the Arminians have coupled the doctrine of falling from 
grace with this. Otherwise their own professors of complete sanctifi- 
cation would have refuted it with a regularity that would have been 
almost a fatality. 

Now, the Almighty Spirit could subdue all sin, in a living saint, if 
He chose. Bible truths certainly present sufficient inducements to act 
as the angels, were our wills completely rectified. Why God does not 
choose, in any case, to work this complete result in this life, we 
cannot tell. "Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in Thy sight." 

Tendencies of two theories compared. — The Wesleyans are ac- 
customed to claim a more stimulating influence towards the pursuit of 
holiness, for their doctrine, and to reproach ours with paralysing re- 
sults. They say, that with a rational agent, hope is a necessary ele- 
ment in the incentives to exertion ; and that it is unnatural and 
impossible a man should attempt, in good earnest, what he thinks im- 
possible to be achieved. But tell him that success, though arduous, 
is possible, and he will strain every nerve, and at least make great 
progress. They say, that Calvinists practically teach their converts not 
to aim high, and to make up their minds to low attainments in holi- 



Of lectures m theology. i6i 

ness. And hence the feehle and crippled character of the most of the 
religion exhibted in their Churches, We reply, that this calculation mis- 
represents the facts, and leaves out one of the most important of them. 
We do not forbid hope. We teach our people to hope for constant 
advances in holiness, by which they approach perfection continually, 
without actually reaching it in this life. The essential fact left out 
of the estimate is the invincible opposition of the new nature to all 
sin. The man renewed by God is incapable of contenting himself 
with any degree of sin. Here is the safeguard against the cessation of 
the struggle under the discouraging belief that the victory is only after 
death. If the indwelling enemy is thus as long-lived as the body, 
and immortal as long as the body lives, yet truce is impossible, because 
the hostility of the new-born soul to it is unquenchable. Does it fol- 
low from this view, that the life must be a life-long battle? I reply, 
even so ; this is just what the Bible represents it to be. 

We can retort on the Wesleyan, a juster objection to the working 
of his theory. By giving a false definition of what perfection is, it 
seems a much greater risk of inciting false pride, and dragging the con- 
science into a tolerance of what it calls guiltless, or venial infirmities. 



LECTURE LV, 



SYLLABUS. 
SANCTIFICATION AND GOOD WORKS. (Continued.) 

5. What constitutes an evangelical good work ? Are any of the natural vir- 
tues of the unregenerate truly good works ? 

Turrettin, que. 4. Dick, Lect. 76. Hill, Bk. v, ch. 4. 

6. What the teaching of Scripture concerning human merit ? What that of 
Rome concerning congruous and condign merit? 

Turrettin, que. 5. Hill, as above, § 2. Knapp, § 108, 125. 

7. State and refute the Popish doctrine of concilia and works of supererogation. 
Th. Aquinas. Pars primna Secandae, que. 108. Sup., que. 13. Turrettin, 
Loc. xi, que. 4. Knapp, § 125. Hill, Bk. v, ch. 4, § 2. 

8. What is the standard set up for the Christian's sanctification? Show the 
relation of Christ's example thereto. 

Dick, Lect. 75. Knapp, § 117. Chalmers' Theol. Inst., vol. ii,ch. 10. 

V. A good work, what ? — There is a gospel sense, in which the 
Scriptures speak of the acts and affections of Christians as good works. 
By this, it is not meant that they are perfect, that they could stand 
the strictness of the divine judgment, or that they are such as would 
receive the reward of eternal life under the Covenant of Works. Yet 
they are essentially different in moral quality from the actions of the 
unrenewed ; and they do express a new and holy nature, as the prin- 
ciple from which they spring. There is also a certain sense in which 






162 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

God approves and rewards them. How are these evangelical actions of 
the soul defined? We conceive that the Scripture characterizes them 
thus: 1. They must he the actions of a regenerate soul; because no 
other can have the dispositions to prompt such actions, and feel such 
motives as must concur. See Matt, xii : 33, or vii : 17,18. 2. The 
action must be, in form, regulated by the revealed will of God ; for He 
allows no other rule of right and wrong for the creature. No act of obe- 
dience to rules of mere human or ecclesiastical deviee can claim to be 
a good work; it is more probably an offence unto God. See Deut. iv : 
2; Is. i: 12; xxix : 13; Matt, xv : 9. As G-od's will is to us practi- 
cally the fountain of authority and obligation, it is obviously unrea- 
sonable that the debtor should decide for the creditor how much or 
what the former sees fit to pay. And moreover, such is the distance 
between God and man, and the darkness of the sinful mind of man, 
we are no suitable judges of what service is proper to render God. 
Man's duty is simply what God requires of him. Can we err in de- 
fining good works as the right performance of duty ] 3. In order 
for that performance to be a good work, its prevalent motive or 
motives must be holy; and among these, especially, must be a re- 
spectful, righteous, and filial regard, either habitual or express, to 
the will of God commanding the act. See 1 Cor. x : 31; Rom. xi : 
36, and xii: 1. No principle of common sense is plainer, than that 
the quality of the act depends on the quality of the intention. An 
act not intended to please God is, of course, not pleasing in His sight, 
no matter how conformed in outward shape, to His precepts. 

A WORK NOT PERFECTLY HOLY MAY BE PREVALENTLY SO. Such 

works are not perfectly, but prevalently holy. I have more than once 
remarked, that the motive of most of our volitions is a complex of 
several appetencies. Now, this habitual, or present filial regard to 
God's authority may be the prevalent motive of a given act; and yet 
it may be short of that fulness and strength which the perfect recti- 
tude and goodness of the heavenly Father deserve. It may also be 
associated with other lower motives. Of these, some may be personal, 
and yet legitimate; as a reasonable subordinate regard to our own 
proper welfare. (The presence of such a motive in the complex would 
not make the volition sinful.) But other motives may, and nearly 
always do, mix with our regard for God, which are not only personal, 
but sinful : either because inordinate, or impure, as a craving for ap- 
plause, or a desire to gratify a spiteful emulation. Remembering the 
views established in the last lecture, you will perceive that in such a 
case, the volition would be on the whole, right and pious, and still 
short of perfect Tightness, or even involving, with its holiness, a taint 
of sin. 

No TRUE GOOD WORKS DONE BY UNCONVERTED OR HEATHEN. But 

the best natural virtues of the heathen, and of all unconverted persons, 
come short of being gospel good works. See, for instance, Gen. vi : 
5, and Rom. viii : 8. This truth recalls the assertion made of the 
total depravity of the race, and its grounds. It will be remembered 
that we did not deny the secular sincerity of the social virtues which 
many pagans and unrenewed men possess. Nor did we represent that 
their virtues were equal to the vices of the wicked. But what we 
mean is, that while nearer right than the open vices, they are still 
short of rightj because they lack the essential motive, regard to God's 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 163 

revealed will and the claims of His love. "God is not in all their 
thoughts." Now, as our relation to God is the nearest and most su- 
preme, an act which ignores this, however right it may he in other 
motives, still remains prevalently wrong in the sight of God. It does 
not reach the level of Bible holiness at all, though it may rise much 
nearer towards it than the sins of the reprobate. We do not, then, rep- 
resent God as judging the amiable and decent transgressor equal to a 
monster of crime, nor condemning all secular virtues as spurious and 
worthless between man and man. 

VI. Merit. Rome's distinction into congruous and condign. — 
The proposition, that even the good works of believers do not earn 
eternal life by their intrinsic merit, has been found very repugnant to 
human pride. Rome consequently seeks to evade the omission of it, 
by her distinction of conyruous and condign merit. (Meritum de con- 
gruo de condigno.) The former she makes only a qualified kind of merit. 
It is that favourable quality which attaches to the good works done by 
the unrenewed man before conversion, which properly moves God to 
bestow on him the help of His grace. The condign merit is that which 
attaches to evangelical good works done after conversion, by the help 
of grace, which, by its proper value and force, entitles the believer to 
eternal life. True, Bellarniine and the Council of Trent, with the 
most of Romanists, say that eternal life comes to the obedient believer 
partly by the merit of his own works, and partly by virtue of Christ's 
promise and purchase ; so that, were there no Saviour, human merit 
would come short of earning heaven. But they hold this essentially 
erroneous idea, that in the gracious works of the justified man there 
is a real and intrinsic merit of reward. 

Merit, strictly. What? — To clear up this matter, let us observe 
that the word merit is used in two senses, the one strict or proper, the 
other loose. Strictly speaking, a meritorious work is that to which, on 
account of its own intrinsic value and dignity, the reward is justly 
due. But when men use the word loosely, they include works deserv- 
ing of approval, and works to which a reward is anyhow attached as a 
consequence. Now, in these latter senses, no one denies that the works 
of the regenerate are meritorious. They are praiseworthy, in a sense. 
They are followed by a recompense. But in the strict sense, of right- 
eously bringing God in the doer's debt, by their own intrinsic moral 
value, no human works are meritorious. 

Hypothetical Merit. — Note further, that it is wholly another 
thing to do works which may fall within the terms of some covenant of 
promise, which God may have graciously bestowed. If the king is 
pleased, in his undeserved kindness, to promise the inheritance for the 
doing of some little service utterly inadequate to the reward, and if 
any creature complies with the terms exactly, then the king is, of 
course, bound to give what he has engaged. But he is bound by fidelity 
to himself, not by justice to the service rendered ; for that, intrinsi- 
cally, is inadequate. 

Strictly, no creature can merit. — In the strict sense, then, no 
work of man brings God in the doer's debt, to reward him. The work 
which is worthy of this must have the following traits : It must be 
one which was not already owed to God. See Luke xvii ; 10. It 



164 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

must be done in the man's own strength ; for if he only does it by the 
strength of Christ, he cannot take to himself the credit of it. " It is 
not he that liveth, but Christ that liveth in him." It must be per- 
fectly and completely right ; for if stained with defect, it cannot merit. 
Last, it must be of sufficient importance to bear some equitable ratio 
to the amount of reward. One would not expect a large sum of money 
as wages for the momentary act of handing a draught of water, how- 
ever cheerfully done. Now, it is plain at the first glance, that no work 
of man to Grod can bring Him, by its own intrinsic merit, under an 
obligation to reward. All our works are owed to God; if all were 
done, we should only "have done what was our duty to do." No right 
work is done in our own mere strength. None are perfect. There is 
no equality between the service of a fleeting life and an inheritance of 
eternal glory. 

Natural works have no merit of congruity. — We may argue, 
farther, that the congruous merit of the Papist is imaginary, because 
nothing the unbeliever does can please God: "Without faith it is 
impossible to please Him." And if grace were the rewards of works 
done without it, then it would be no more grace. The whole Scripture 
holds forth the truth that Christ bestows that grace, not because of 
any merit, but in spite of utter unworthiness. " When we were with- 
out strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." 

Our works under grace have no merit of condignity. — So, the 
merit of condignity claimed for good works done after conversion is 
shown to be groundless by what has been already said. Had Adam or 
Gabriel rendered, in his own strength, perfect works to God, apart 
from a covenant of promise, he could not have merited eternal life by 
temporary obedience. How much less can the Christian, when his 
works are not perfect, and are only rendered in a strength not his own? 
To this agree all the Scriptures. Rom. vi : 23 ; v : 15-18 ; Eph. ii : 8 ; 
2 Tim. i: 9; Tit. iii - 5, et passim. Turrettin sustains this view far- 
ther, by showing that the gracious acts, for which Romanists claim 
merit of condignity, and the eternal life attached to them, are always 
spoken of as the Father's gifts ; that they are always spoken of as the 
Redeemer's purchase; that the Christians who do them are represented 
in the Bible as acknowledging themselves "unprofitable servants;" 
and that they always confess the unworthiness of their best works, 
especially in view of the everlasting reward. The Scriptures which 
might be collected under these heads would present an overwhelming 
array of proof. 

It does not follow that recause Sin merits, our Works do. — 
But carnal men strongly resent this conclusion; and urge, as though 
it were a self-evident refutation, that as sin and good works are in 
antithesis, we cannot hold that man's sin carries a true and essential 
desert of punishment, and deny that his good work carries an equal 
desert of reward. To affix the one and refuse the other, they exclaim, 
would be a flagrant injustice. I reply: Between human rulers and 
ruled, it would. But they forget here the prime fact, that God is the 
Maker and sovereign Proprietor of men. The property may be delin- 
quent towards its sovereign Owner, but it cannot make the Owner de- 
linquent to it. If it fails in due service, it injures the rights of its 



0-F LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. ie5 

Owner: if it renders the service, it only satisfies those rights ; nothing 
more. But here a certain concession should be made. While a crea- 
ture's perfect obedience is not meritorious of any claim of reward 
Upon his Lord, in the strict sense, there is a relation of moral pro- 
priety between such obedience and reward. We saw that it appeared 
unreasonable to claim everlasting reward for temporal service. But 
does not a perfect temporal service deserve of G-od temporal reward 1 
I would say, in a certain sense, Yes; supposing the creature in a state 
of innocency and harmony with his Lord. That is, it would be incon- 
sistent with God's rectitude and benevolence, to begin to visit on this 
innocent creature the evils due to sin, before he transgressed. God 
would not infringe, by any suffering or wrath, that natural blessedness, 
with which His own holiness and goodness always leads Him to endow 
the state of innocency. But here the obligation is to God's own per- 
fections, rather than to the creature's merit. 

Is the Covenant of Works revoked ok God's part? — We may 
note, in this connexion, the question whether the offer in the Covenant 
of Works has been retracted by God, since Adam broke it? Those 
who say it is retracted, rely on such statements as Heb. viii : 9 ; Gal. 
ii : 21. Those who deny, advance such words as those of Christ to the 
young ruler: "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." 
Matt, xix: 17. The debate might seem a very frivolous one, in view 
of the fact that no mere man is morally able to keep the command- 
ments of God. But it suggests these remarks, which are of value to 
set forth these subjects. Since God was not bound to promise the 
additional and everlasting rewards of an adoption of life, He might 
retract it after the creature has failed to comply, without any injustice, 
(as He might, without injustice, have refrained from offering it.) But 
second : while the temporary obedience of a holy creature does not, of 
itself, earn everlasting life, it' was every way worthy of God's holiness 
and benevolence, to promise it to Adam and the elect angels on those 
terms. Third : man has made himself utterly incapable of complying 
with the terms ; yet compliance is rendered, in the person of the sec- 
ond Adam his Substitute : and eternal life actually earned for us in 
that way; so that, although man failed, the Covenant of Works, in 
that sense, did not. Hence, it would appear from the Scriptures, that 
God sees fit, for the glory of His own grace, to leave that act of His 
condescension unrevoked, although knowing perfectly well that no 
mere man would ever avail himself of it; while superadding that 
other act of His greater condescension and grace, the gospel. 

In what sense are believer's works rewarded ? — It only re- 
mains, on this head, to explain the relation between the good works of 
the justified believer and his heavenly reward. It is explained by the 
distinction between an intrinsic and original merit of reward, and the 
hypothetical merit granted by promise. If the slave fulfils his master's 
orders, he does not bring the latter in his debt. "He is an unprofita- 
ble servant; he has only done what was his duty to do." But if the 
master chooses, in mere generosity, to promise freedom and an inheri- 
tance of a thousand talents for some slight service, cheerfully performed, 
then the service must be followed by the reward. The master owes it 
not to the intrinsic value of the slave's acts, (the actual pecuniary ad- 



166 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

dition made thereby to the master's wealth may be little or nothing,) 
but to his own word. Now, in this sense, the blessings of heaven bear 
the relation of a "free reward" to the believer's service. It contri- 
butes nothing esssential to earning the inheritance ; in that point of 
view it is as wholly gratuitous to the believer as though he had been 
all the time asleep. The essential merit that earned it is Christ's. 
Yet it isrelated to the loving obedience of the believer, as appointed 
consequence. Thus it appears how all the defects in his evangelical 
obedience (defects which, were he under a legal covenant, would pro- 
cure the curse, and not blessing.) are covered by the Saviour's right- 
eousnesss ; so that through Him the inadequate works receive a recom- 
pense. Moreover, it is clearly taught that God has seen fit, in appor- 
tioning degrees of blessedness to different justified persons, to measure 
them by the amount of their good works. See Matt, xvi : 27; 1 Cor. 
iii : 8, of which Turrettin remarks, that the reward is " acccording to," 
but not " on account of" the works. See, also, 2 Cor. ix : 6 ; Luke xix : 
17, 18. Not only the sovereignty, but the wisdom and righteousness of 
a gracious God are seen in this arrangement. Thus a rational motive 
is applied to educe diligent obedience. Thus it is evinced that the gos- 
pel is not a ministration of indolence or disobedience ; and God's ver- 
dicts in Christ not inconsistent with natural justice. It is thus, because 
the gi*ace given on earth is a preparation of the soul for more grace in 
heaven. And, last, good works are the only practical and valid test 
of the genuineness of that faith by which believers receive the perfect 
merits of Chi'ist. This last fact, especially, makes it proper that the 
" free reward " shall be bestowed "according to their works;" and 
explains a multitude of passages, which seem to make the reward de- 
pend on the works. 

VII. Works of Supererogation. Source of heresy. — It may 
be said that the Romish Church is indebted to the age of Thomas 
Aquinas, and most probably to him, for the final theory of " works of 
supererogation." He found everywhere among the Fathers, the dis- 
tinction between Christ's pr'aecepta and concilia. This distinction, 
pretending to find its grounds in certain texts of the New Testament, 
more probably had its origin in a desire to imitate the exoteric and 
esoteric, the higher and lower morals of the New Platonists. The in- 
stances of Concilia usually quoted are those of Matt, xix : 12 and 21 ; 
1 Cor. vii : 38-40 ; Acts xxi : 23, 24, and are usually grouped by them 
under the three virtues of voluntary poverty, perpetual chastity, and 
regular obedience. The Church had long held, that while every one 
must strive to obey all the precepts of Christ, on pain of damnation, 
he is not expressly bound to comply with the "councils of perfection." 
If he sees fit to omit them, he incurs no wrath. They are but recom- 
mendations. Yet, if his devoted spirit impels him to keep them for 
the glory of God, he thereby earns supererogatory merit, superfluous 
to his own justification. Aquinas now proceeds to build on this foun- 
dation thus: One man can work a righteousness, either penal or super- 
erogatory, so that its imputation to his brother may take place. What 
else, he urges, is the meaning of Gal. vi : 2 : " Bear ye one anothers' 
burdens," &c 1 And among men, one man's generous efforts are per- 
mitted in a thousand ways to avail for another, as in suretyships. 
"But with God, love avails for more than with men." Yea, a less 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 16V 

penance is a satisfaction for a brother's guilt than would be requisite 
for one's own, in the case of an equal sin. Because the purer disin- 
terestedness displayed in atoning for the penitential guilt of a brother 
renders it more amiable in the sight of God, and so, more expiatory. 
If a sinning believer hits himself twenty blows with his whip on his 
bare shoulders, it may be that a selfish fear of purgatory is a large 
part of his motive; and God will subtract from the merit of the act 
accordingly. But when he does it for his brother's sin, it is pure, dis- 
interested love and zeal for God's honour, the twenty blows will count 
for more. 

Imputation of Superogatory merit, and indulgence thereby, 
of penitential guilt. — The philosopher then resorts to the doctrine 
of the unity of the Church, and the communion of saints in each 
other's graces and sufferings, to show that the merit of these supereroga- 
tory services and sufferings is imputed to others. There is, in the holy 
Catholic Church then, a treasury to which all this spare merit flows. 
As the priesthood holds the power of the keys, they of course are the 
proper persons to dispense and apply it. But as the unity of the 
Church is especially represented in its earthly head, the Pope, he es- 
pecially is the proper person to have charge of the treasury. And 
this is the way indulgentia is procured; the Pope imputes some of this 
supererogatory merit of works and penance out of the Church-treasure, 
whence the remission to the culprit of the penitential and purgatorial 
satisfaction due from him for sin. But his confession, absolution, and 
contrition are necessary ; otherwise indulgence does no good ; because 
without these exercises the man's own personal penance would have 
done no good. Last, this indulgence may properly be given by the 
Church, in return for money, provided it be directed to a holy use, as 
repairing churches, building monasteries, &c. (He forgot our Saviour's 
words: "Freely ye have received, freely give.") 

"■"Distinction of counsels of perfection refuted. — The overthrow 
of all this artificial structure is very easy for the Protestant. We 
utterly deny the distinction of the pretended " councils of perfection," 
from the precepts, as wicked and senseless. It is impossible that it 
can hold; because we are told that the precepts go to this extent, viz : 
requiring' us io love God with all the soul, and heart, and mind, 
strength. If, then, any Christian has indeed found out that his cir- 
cumstances are such, the refraining from a given act, before and else- 
where indifferent, has become necessary to Christ's highest glory : then 
for Him. it is obligatory, and no longer optional. " To him that know- 
eth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." Again: how can 
he have superfluity who lacks enough for himself? But all. lack right- 
eousness for their own justification; for " in many things we offend 
all." So, the Scriptures utterly repudiate the notion that the right- 
eousness of one man is imputable to another. Christian fellowship 
carries no such result. It was necessary (for reasons unfolded in the 
discussion of the Mediator), that God should effectuate the miracle of 
the hypostatic union, in order to make a Person,, whose merit was im- 
putable. "None of them can by any means redeem his brother, or 
give to God a ransom for him." Nor does the Protestant recognize 
the existence of that penitential guilt, which is professed to be remitted 
by the indulgence." 



168] « SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

VIII. Standard of Sanctification, Law, and Jesus' Example. — 
The standard set for the believer's sanctification is the character of God 
as expressed in His preceptive law. This rule is perfect, and should be 
sufficient for our guidance. But God, in condescension to our weak and 
corporeal nature, has also given us an example, in the life of the Re- 
deemer. And this was a subsidiary, yet important object of His mission. 
See 1 Pet. ii : 21. (We recognize in its proper place, this prophetic 
function of the Mediator, which the Socinian makes the sole one.) 
The advantage of having the holy law teaching by example is obvious. 
Man is notoriously an imitative creature. God would fain avail Him- 
self of this powerful lever of education for bis moral culture. Ex- 
ample is also superior in perspicuity and interest, possessing all the 
advantage over precept, which illustration has over abstract statement. 
If we inspect the example of Christ, we shall find that it has been ad- 
justed to its purpose with a skill and wisdom only inferior to that 
displayed in His atoning offices. Examining first the conditions of an 
effective example, we find that they all concur in Christ. It is desira- 
ble that our exemplar be human ; for though holiness in God and in 
angels is, in principle, identical with man's ; yet in detail it is too 
different to be a guide. Yet, while it is so desirable that the example be 
human, it must be perfect; for fallible man would be too sure to imi- 
tate defects, on an exaggerated scale. Man is naturally out of har- 
mony with holiness, too far to be allured by its example ; he would 
rather be alienated and angered by it. Hence, the exemplar must 
begin by putting forth a regenerating and reconciling agency. Last: 
it is exceedingly desirous that the exemplar should also be an object 
of warm affection ; because we notice that the imitative instinct always 
acts far most strongly towards one beloved. But Christ is made by 
His work the prime object of the believer's love. 

Value of Christ's Example. — The value of Christ's example may 
be also illustrated in the following particulars : It verifies for us the 
conception of holiness, as generally displayed in God. That concep- 
tion must lack definiteness, until we see it -embodied in this " Image 
of the invisible God," who is "the brightness of His glory, and the 
express image of His person." Nest, Christ has illustrated the duties 
of all ages and stations; for the divine wisdom collected into His brief 
life all grades, making Him show us a perfect child, youth, man, son, 
friend, teacher, subject, ruler, king, hero, and sufferer. Again, Christ 
teaches us how common duties are exalted, when performed from an 
elevated motive; for He was earning for His Church infinite blessed- 
ness, and for His Father eternal glory, when fulfilling the humble tasks 
of a peasant and mechanic. And last, in His death especially, He 
illustrated those duties which are at once hardest and most essential, 
because attaching to the most critical emergencies of our being, the 
duties of forgiveness under wrong, patience and fortitude under an^ 
guish, and faith and courage in the hour of death. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 169 

LECTURE LYI. 



SYLLABUS. 
PERSEVERANCE OF SAINTS. 

1. State the doctrine of Pelagians, Papists, Arminians, and Calvinists here- 
upon. 

Conf. of Faith, ch. xvii. Turrettin, Loc. xv, que. 61, § 1-8. 

2. Prove the doctrine. 1. From God's election. 2. From the Covenant of 
Grace. 3. From the believer's union to Christ and participation in His merit 
and intercession. 4. From the indwelling of the seed and Spirit. 

Turrettin, as above, § 8 to 28. Dick, Lect. 79. Ridgeley, que. 79. 

3. Present any other direct Scripture pi oofs in your power. 
Ridgeley, que. 79. Bible, 

4. Reconcile objections ; and especially those founded on Scripture passages, 
as Ezek. xviii : 24; Heb. vi . 4, &c; x: 29 and 38; iii : 12; 1 Cor. ix : 27; 2 
Pet. ii : 20 ; Rom. xiv : 15, &c. 

Turrettin, as above, § 29 to end. Dick, Lect. 79. Ridgeley, que. 79, § iv. 
Sampson on Hebrews. Watson's Theol. Institutes, ch. xxv. 

5. What is the moral tendency of the doctrine ? 
Same authorities. 

This Doctrine encouraging to preacher. — Scripture and expe- 
rience concur in imputing to man, in his natural state, an obduracy 
and deadness of heart, which would leave the preacher of the gospel 
to labour in despair, were it not for his dependence in the sovereign 
grace of God. But when he believes firmly in the eternal covenant of 
grace, whereby God has promised His Son a chosen seed, not for any 
merit which He sees in sinners, and to call and perfect this seed by His 
efficacious grace, there is ground laid for cheerful exertions. The 
laborious Christian then looks upon his own efforts for sinners, as one 
of the preordained steps in this plan of mercy, upon his prayers as 
taught him by the Holy Ghost, and therefore surely destined to an an- 
swer ; and upon the visible success of his labours, as the evidence that 
that God, whose plans are immutable, and who always perfects what 
He undertakes, is working. He is joyfully hopeful concerning the 
fiaal triumph of those who are born unto God by His instrumentality, 
because He sees an eternal purpose and unchangeable love engaged for 
their upholding. He can cheerfully leave them, though surrounded 
with the snares of the world; because He leaves the Chief Shepherd 
■with them, who will easily raise up other instruments and provide 
other means for their guidance. 

St. Paul found it so. — In this spirit the Apostle says, Phil, i : G, 
that from the first day of their conversion till now, his prayers for his 
Philippian converts bad always been offered in joy, because he was 
confident that the Redeemer, who had begun the blessed work in them, 
by their regeneration, faith, and repentance, would continue that work 
of sanctification, till it was perfected at the second coming of Jesus 
Christ, in the resurrection of their bodies and their complete glorifica- 
tion. This work was begun in them by God, not by their own free 
choica, independent of grace ; for that choice always would have been, 
most freely and heartily, to choose sin. It must have been begun by 



170 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

God from deliberate design; for God worketh all things after the 
council of His own will. That design and purpose of mercy was not 
iounded on any thing good in them, but on God's unchangeable mercy ; 
and therefore it would not be changed by any of their faults, but the 
unchanging God would carry it out to perfection. 

Doctrine to be discussed fairly. — We have here the Apostle's 
plain expression of his belief in the perseverance of the truly regene- 
rate, in a state of repentance, unto the end. In attempting the dis- 
cussion of this doctrine, let us exercise the spirit of humility and 
candour, laying aside prejudice, avoiding all abuses or perversions of 
God's truth, and striving to apprehend it just as He has presented it. 
1 would at the outset guard the truth from abuse, and from opposition 
by defining : 

F 1 Perseverance defined. — That this perseverance- in a state of grace 
is not innate and necessary, with the new-born nature, but gracious. 
It does not proceed from anything in the interior state of the regene- 
rate soul, but wholly from God's purpose of mercy towards that soul. 
Security from fall is the attribute of none but God. Adam in Paradise 
was capable of apostasy. Holy angels were capable of apostasy; for 
many of them fell; and doubtless the angels and glorified saints in 
heaven owe their infallibility, not to their own strength, but to God's 
unchanging grace working in them. Much more would the Christian, 
in his imperfection, be liable to fall. 

| (Not compatible with sin. — This perseverance does not imply that 
a man may be living in habitual and purposed sin, and yet be in a 
justified state, because he who is once justified cannot come into con- 
demnation. We heartily join in everything which can be said against 
so odious a doctrine. It is impossible, because the living in such a 
state of sin proves that the man never was, and is not now, in a justi- 
fied state, whatever may be his names and boasts. 

I^.Our doctrine does not teach that mary will not be finally lost, who are 
connected with the visible Church outwardly, and whom the Scriptures 
may call believers in a certain sense, because they have a temporary 
or historical faith, like that of Simon Magus. Eut those who have 
once had in them the true principle of spiritual life, never lose it. 

Nor do we teach that all Christians have equal spiritual vitality at 
all times; but the^ may fall into partial errors of doctrine, coldness 
and sin, which may for a time wholly interrupt their comfort in reli- 
gion, and overcloud their evidences of a gracious state. Yet is the root 
of the matter there. 

Definition of Westminster Assembly. — It is simply this; that 
"They whom God hath accepted in His Beloved, and effectually called 
and sanctified by His Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away 
from the state of graee ; but shall certainly persevere therein to the 
end, and be eternally saved." 

As I have taken the definition of the doctrine from the Confession 
of Faith. I cannot do better than to take my method of discussion 
from the same source. Under each head many Scriptures will come 
in, more naturally and easily, so that the support they give to the doc- 
trine will be more manifest, and more clearly understood. 

I. Argued from Elec tion. — "The perseverance of the saints depends 



OF LECTURES IX THEOLOGY. 171 

upon the immutability of the decree of election. ^ When any one is born 
again of the Holy Ghost and justified in Christ, it is because God had 
formed, from eternity, the unchangeable purpose to save that soul. The 
work of grace in it is the mere carrying out of that unchangeable purpose. 
As the plan is unchangeable, so must be its execution, when that exe- 
cution is in the hands of the Almighty. How can argument be more 
direct? Heb. vi : 17, 18. God, willing more abundantly to shew 
unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed 
it by an oath, &c. See also Matt, xxiv : 24; 2 Tim. ii : 19; Roin. 
viii; 29; viii : 33, &c. 

Might be argued from certain Foreknowledge. — And even 
though this unchangeable election were conditional, and made in fore- 
sight of the believer's faith and obedience, yet if it has any certainty 
it must imply that the believer shall certainly be kept from finally fall- 
ing away. If it even rose no higher than simple foreknowledge, yet a 
foreknowledge which means anything, must be certain. If God does 
not certainly know whether a given event shall take place or not, then 
He does not foreknow it at all. But if He certainly knows that it 
shall occur, the occurrence of that event must be without failure: 
otherwise God's foreknowledge would be false ! So that unless we im- 
piously strip God of His foreknowledge, (to say nothing of His having 
an all-wise, almighty, and immutable plan,) we must suppose that the 
perseverance in a gracious state, of all those whom He foresees will be 
finally saved, is so far necessary that they cannot finally fall awa}\ 

II. Argued from Freedom of Electing Love. No unforeseen 
provocation of God arises. — "The perseverance of believers follows 
from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father," which was 
the ground of their being chosen unto salvation. The Scriptures make 
it plain that the reason why God ever determined to save any man was not 
His seeing in him anything good, attractive or extenuating, but some- 
thing without, known to His wisdom, which was to God a good and wise 
reason to bestow His eternal love on that particular sinner. Rom. ix : 
11 and 16. This sovereign and unmerited love is the cause of the be- 
liever's eiFectual calling. Jer. xxxi : 3 ; Horn, viii : 30. Now, as the 
cause is unchangeable, the effect will be unchangeable. That effect is, 
the constant communication of grace to the believer in whom God hath 
begun a good work. God was not induced to bestow His renewing 
grace in the first instance, by anything which He saw, meritorious or 
attractive, in the repenting sinner; and therefore the subsequent ab- 
sence of everything good in him would be no new motive to God for 
withdrawing His grace. When He first bestowed that grace, He knew 
that the sinner on whom He bestowed it was totally depraved, and 
wholly and only hateful in himself to the divine holiness ; and there- 
fore no new instance of ingratitude or unfaithfulness, of which the 
sinner may become guilty after his conversion, can be any provocation 
to God, to change His mind, and wholly withdraw His sustaining grace. 
God knew all this ingratitude before. He will chastise it, by tempo- 
rarily withdrawing His Holy Ghost, or His providential mercies; but 
if He has not intended from the first to bear with it, and to forgive it 
in Christ, He would not have called the sinner by His grace at first. 
In a word, the causes for which God determined to bestow His elect- 






172 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

ing love on the sinner are wholly in God, and not at all in the believer ; 
and hence, nothing in the believer's heart or conduct can finally change 
that purpose of love. Is. liv : 10; Horn, si: 29. Compare carefully 
Rom. v: 8-10; viii : 32, with whole scope of Rom. viii: 28— end. This 
illustrious passage is but an argument for our proposition: "What 
shall separate us from the love of Christ ?" 

III. Argued from Christ's merit. — This doctrine depends "upon 
the efficacy .of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ." As all 
Christians agree, the sole ground of the acceptance of believers is the 
justifying righteousness of Jesus Christ. The objects of God's eternal 
love were "chosen in Christ, before the foundation of the world," 
"accepted in the Beloved," and made the recipients of saving bless- 
ings, on accouut of what Christ does in their stead. Now, this ground 
of justification, this atonement for sin, this motive for the bestowal of 
divine love, is perfect, Christ's atonement surmounts the demerit of 
all possible sin or ingratitude. His righteousness is a complete price 
to purchase the sinner's pardon and acceptance. See Heb. ix : 12 ; 
x: 12 and 14; Jno. v : 24. See with what splendid assurance and 
boldness Paul argues from this ground. Rom. viii : 33 and 34. Can 
one who has been fully justified in Christ, whose sins have been all blotted 
out, irrespective of their heinousness, by the perfect and efficacious 
price paid by Jesus Christ, become again wnjustified, and fall under 
condemnation without a dishonour done to Christ's righteousness? 

From Christ's Intercession. — So likewise the prevalent and per- 
petual intercession of Christ, founded on the perfect merit of His work, 
ensures the salvation of all for whom He has once undertaken. We 
are assured that the Father heareth Him always, when He speaks as 
the Mediator of His people. Jno. xi : 42. Now, after He has uttered 
for His believing people — for all who should believe Him through the 
gospel of His apostles — such prayers as those of Jno. xvii : 20, &c, 
24, must not the answer of this request, or, in other words, the certain 
final redemption of all who ever shared His intercession, be as sure as 
the truth of God ? But if any man is ever justified, that man has shared 
the intercession of Christ ; for it was only through this that He was 
first accepted. Heb. vii : 25. 

IV. Argued from the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. — The 
perseverance of the saints proceeds "from the abiding of the Spirit, 
and of the seed of God within them." Every Christian, at the hour 
he believes, is so united to Christ, that he partakes of His indwell- 
ing Spirit. This union is a permanent one. The moving cause for 
instituting it, God's free and eternal love, is a permanent and un- 
changeable cause. The indwelling of the Spirit promised to believers 
• s a permanent and abiding gift. 1 Jno. ii : 27. 

From the Seal and Earnest. — His regenerating operations are 
spoken of as a "seal," and an "earnest" of our redemption. Eph. 
i : 13, 14 ; 2 Cor. i : 22. The use of a seal is to ratify a covenant, and 
make the fulfilment of it certain to both parties. An "earnest" 
(arrhabon) is a small portion of the thing covenanted, given in ad- 
vance, as a pledge of the certain intention to bestow the whole, at the 
promised time. Thus, he who promised to give a sum of money for 
some possession, at some appointed future day, gave a small sum in 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 173 

advance, when the covenant was formed, as a pledge for the rest. So 
the renewing of the Holy Ghost is, to every believer who has eujnyel 
it, a seal, impressing the image of Christ on the was of his softenel 
heart, closing and certifying the engagement of God's love, to redeem 
the soul. It is the earnest, or advance, made to the soul, to engage 
God to the final bestowal of complete holiness and glory. Unless the 
final perseverance of believers is certain, it could be no pledge nor 
seal. The inference is as simple and as strong as words can express, 
that he who has once enjoyed this seal and earnest is thereby certified 
that God will continue to give the Holy Ghost until the end. 

Work of Holy Ghost not fickle. — It is a most low and unworthy 
estimate of the wisdom of the Holy Ghost and of His work in the 
heart, to suppose that He will begin the work now, and presently de- 
sert it; that the vital spark of heavenly birth is an ignis fatuus, burn- 
ing for a short season, and then expiring in utter darkness; that the 
spiritual life communicated in the new birth, is a sort of spasmodic or 
galvanic vitality, giving the outward appearance of life in the dead 
soul, and then dying. Not such is the seed of God within us. Jno. 
v : 24. " Verily, verily I say unto you : He that heareth My word, and 
believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life." John iii : 15 ; 
vi : 54. The principle then implanted, is a never-dying principle. In 
every believer an eternal spiritual life is begun. If all did not per- 
severe in holiness, there would be some in whom there was a true 
spiritual life, but not everlasting. The promise would not be true. 
See also 1 Jobn iii : 9 ; 1 Peter i : 23. 

V. Argued from the Covenant of Grace. — Our doctrine follows, 
also, " from the nature of the Covenant of Grace." God did, from 
eternity, make with His Son a gracious covenant, engaging, in return 
for the Son's humiliation, to give Him the souls of all who were chosen 
in Him before the foundation of the world, "that they should be holy 
and without blame before Hiin in love." This covenant is an ever- 
lasting one. Jer. xxxii : 40. It is an unchangeable covenant. Ps. 
lxxxix ; 34, (spoken of the second David.) The sole condition of the 
covenant is Christ's work for His chosen people. Heb. x : 14. Now, 
the administration of such a covenant most plainly requires that there 
shall be no uncertainty in its results. If one of those whose sins 
Christ bore, ever fell into final condemnation, the contract would be 
proved temporary, changeable, and false. 

This Covenant pledges grace to persevere. — On the eternal cer- 
tainty of this covenant is founded the faithfulness of the gospel offer, 
pledging God to every sinner who believes and repents, that he shall 
through Christ receive saving grace ; and among those gracious influ- 
ences thus pledged with eternal truth to the believer , from the moment he 
truly believes, is persevering grace. Jer. xxxii: 40; (proved to be the 
gospel pledge by Heb. viii : 10;) Is. liv : 10; Hos. ii : 19 and 20; 1 
Thess. v: 23,24; Jno. x: 27; J Pet. i : 5; Rom, viii : end. These 
are a few from the multitude of promises, assuring us of our final 
safety from every possible influence, when once we are truly in Christ. 

Evasions. — I am well aware that the force of these and all similar 
passages has been met, by asserting that in all gospel promises there is 
a condition implied, viz : That they shall be fulfilled, provided the be- 



174 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

liever does not backslide, on his part, from his gospel privileges. But is 
this all which these seemingly precious words mean 1 Then they mean 
nothing. To him who knows his own heart, what is that promise of 
security worth, which offers him no certainty to secure him against his 
own weakness? All " his sufficiency is of God." Rom. vii : 21. If 
his enjoyment of the promised grace is suspended upon his own perse- 
verance in cleaving to it, then his apostasy is not a thing possible, or 
probable, but certain. There is no hope in the gospel. And when 
such a condition is thrust into such a promise as that of Jno. x: 27: 
"None shall pluck them out of My hand," provided they do not choose 
to let themselves be plucked away; are we to suppose that Christ did 
not know that common Bible truth, that the only way any spiritual 
danger can assail any soul successfully, is by persuasion : that unless 
the adversary can get the consent of the believer's free will, he cannot 
harm him] Was it not thus that Adam was ruined? Is there any 
other way by which a soul can be plucked away from his G-od 1 Surely 
Jesus knew this; and if this supposed condition is to be understood, 
then this precious promise would be but a worthless and pompous tru- 
ism. "Your souls shall never be destroyed, unless in a given way," and 
that way the only and the common way in which souls are ever de- 
stroyed. " You shall never fall, as long as you stand up." 

Jer. xxxii: 40 conclusive. — But to thoroughly close the whole 
argument, we have only to remark, that the promise in Jer. xxxii : 40, 
which is most absolutely proved by Heb. viii: 10, &c, to be the gospel 
covenant, most expressly engages God to preserve believers from this 
very thing — their own backsliding. Not only does He engage that He 
will not depart from them, but "He will put His fear in their hearts, 
so that they shall not depart from Him." 

VI. Independent arguments for perseverance. — Other argu- 
ments exist, from independent assertions of Scripture. It used to be 
common with the Calvinistic divines to advance the joy of the angels 
over repenting sinners, as a proof of their perseverance. The idea 
was, that if their state in grace were mutable, these wise and grand 
creatures would not have attached so much importance to it. To me this 
reasoning always appeared inconclusive. We have seen good Chris- 
tians sometimes rejoicing very sincerely over what turned out to be a 
spurious conversion, because they supposed it to be genuine. Now, it 
does not appear that the angels are always infallible in their judgments 
of appearances, any more than we, although far wiser. Besides, if 
some true converts did fall from grace, the angels would still know that 
those who finally reach heaven must be sought among the sinners who 
experience conversion on earth. A much more conclusive argument 
may be drawn from those passages, which explain the apostasy of seem- 
ing converts, in consistency with the perseverance of true saints. One 
of these is found in 2 Pet. ii : 22. Here the apostate professor is an 
unclean animal, only outwardly cleansed; a "sow that was washed ;" 
its nature is not turned into a lamb ; and this is the explanation of its 
return to the mire. A still stronger one is 1 Jno. ii : 19. Here the 
departure of apostates is explained by the fact, that their union to 
Christ and His people never was real ; because had it been real they "no 
doubt would have continued with us ;" and their apostasy was permis- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 175 

sively designed by God to "manifest" the fact that they never had 
been true believers. 

Another proof presents itself in the parable of the sower. Matt. 
xiii ; 6 and 21. The stony-ground-hearer withers because he "hath 
no root in himself." Still another maybe found in 2 Tim. ii : 19. 
There the Apostle, referring to such temporary professors as Hymeneus 
and Philetus, explains that their apostasy implied no uncertainty as to 
the constitution of the body of Christ's redeemed, because God knew 
all the time who were truly His ; and the foundation of His purpose 
concerning their salvation stood immovable amidst all the changes and 
apostasies which startle blind men. 

Backslidings explained. — Yfith reference to all objections founded 
on the cases of Solomon, David, Peter, Judas and such like, I reply 
briefly, that the explanation is either that of John's first Epistle 2:19, 
that they never had true grace to lose, or else, the history contains 
proof that their apostasy was neither total nor final, though grievous. In 
Peter's case, Christ says, Luke xxii : 32, that "Satan desired to sift him 
like wheat, but He prayed for him that his faith should not fail." Peter's 
faith, therefore, did not fail, though his duty did. So the prayer of 
David, Ps. Ii : 11, 12, shows that he was a true saint before and after 
his sin. That the principle of true grace can exist, and can be for a 
time so foully obscured, as in David's case, is indeed a startling and 
alarming truth. Yet does not the experience of society, and of our 
own hearts substantiate the view 1 

Texts advanced in objection. — Your commentaries and other text 
books will give you those detailed explanations which you need, of the 
texts advanced by Arminians against our doctrine. I may say that the 
two loca palmar ia on which they chiefly rely are Heb. vi : 4-6, and 
Ezek. xviii : 24-29. 

Heb. vi : 4. — Of the first we may briefly remark, that it does not 
appear the spiritual endowments there described of the apostate, amount 
to a true state of grace. A detailed criticism and comparison of the 
traits, being enlightened, &c, will show that according to the usage of 
the Scriptures they describe, not a regenerate state, but one of deep 
conviction and concern, great privilege, with perhaps charisrrs of 
tongues or healings. The examplars are to be found in such men as 
Balaam, Simon Magus, and Demas. And this is most consistent with 
the Apostle's scope. The terms here, if meant to describe ordinary 
saving conversion, would at least be most singular and unusual. They 
are evidently vague, and intentionally so : because God does not care to 
enable us to decide exactly how near we may go to the impassable line 
in grieving His Spirit, and yet be forgiven. 

Ezek. xviii : 24, &c. — With reference to the passage from Ezekiel, it 
could only be claimed by Arminians, in virtue of great inattention to 
the prophet's object in the passage. Ezekiel's mission was to call Israel 
(especially the people in captivity in Mesopotamia) to repentance. He 
points to their calamities and the destruction of the larger part of their 
nation as proof of their great guilt. They attempt to evade his charge 
by pleading that "their teeth were set on edge, because their father's 
had eaten sour grapes." God answers, in the early part of the chapter, 
that this explanation of their calamities is untenable; because (while 



1 76 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

much of His providence over men does visit the father's sins upon sin- 
ful children) the guilt of sinful fathers is never, in His theocracy, and 
under according to the covenant of Horeb, visited on righteous children. 
He then goes farther and reminds them that not only did He always 
restore prosperity, in the theocracy, as soon as an obedient generation 
succeeded a rebellious one ; but even more, as soon as a rebellious man 
truly repented, he was forgiven; just as when a righteous man aposta- 
tizes, he is punished. It would appear, therefore, that the thing of 
which the prophet is speaking is not a state of grace at all ; but the 
outward, formal, and civic decency of a citizen of the theocracy ; and 
that the punishments into which such a man fell on lapsing into rebel- 
lion were temporal calamities. But farther, the whole passage is hy- 
pothetical. It merely supposes a pair of cases. If the transgressor 
repents, he shall be forgiven. Does the prophet mean to teach that 
any do savingly repent, in whom God does not purpose to work repen- 
tance 1 Let ch. xxxvi: 26, 27, and xxxvii : 1-10, answer. So, does 
He mean to teach that any actually fall into rebellion, who share the 
grace of G-od 1 Let ch. xxxvi : 27, &c, again answer. 

General answer. — There is one general element of objection in all 
these texts ; that when God warns the righteous, the believer, &c, 
against the dangers of apostasy ; or when He stimulates Him to zeal in 
holy living by the thought of those dangers, God thereby clearly im- 
plies that blievers may apostatise. The answer is : Naturally speaking, 
so he may. The certainty that he will not arises, not from the strength 
of a regenerated heart, but from God's secret, unchangeable purpose 
concerning the believer ; which purpose He executes towards, and ia 
him, by moral means consitent with the creature's free agency. Among 
these appropriate motives are these very warnings of dangers and whole- 
some fears about apostasy. Therefore God's application of these mo- 
tives to the regenerate free agent, proves not at all that it is God's 
secret purpose to let him apostatise. They are a part of that plan by 
which God intends to ensure that he shall not. Compare carefully 
Acts xxvii : vs. 22, 23, 24, 25, with 31. 

Practical results sanctifying. — In conclusion, we believe that all 
the supposed licentious results of the doctrine of perseverance, result 
from misapprehension ; and that its true tendencies are eminently en- 
couraging and sanctifying, a.) How can the intelligent Bible Christian 
be encouraged to sin, by a doctrine which assures him of a perseverance 
in holiness; if he is a true believer, b.) So far as a rational self-love is 
a proper motive for a sanctified mind, this doctrine leaves it in full 
force; because when the Arminian would be led by a backsliding, to 
fear he had fallen from grace, the Calvinist would be led, just as much, 
to fear he never had had any grace ; a fear much more wholesome and 
searching than the erring Arminian's For this alarmed Calvinist 
would see, that, while he had been flattering himself he was advancing 
heavenward, he was in fact all the time in the highroad to hell ; and 
so now, if he would not be damned, he must make a new beginning, and 
lay belter foundations than his old ones, (not like the alarmed Armin- 
ian, merely set about reparing the same old ones.) c.) Certainty of 
success, condition on honest efforts, is the very best stimulus to active 
exertion. Witness the skilful general encouraging his army, d.) Last 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 177 

Such a gift of redemption as the Calvinist represents is far nobler and 
more gracious, and hence elicits more love and gratitude, which are 
the noblest motives, the strongest and best. 

Comfort of the Doctrine. — Just so far as the Calvinist is enabled 
scripturally to hope that he is now born again, he is, to that extent, 
entitled to hope that his triumph is sure ; that death and hell are dis- 
armed, and that his heaven is awaiting his efforts. To him who knows the 
weakness of the human heart, and the power of our spiritual enemies, 
the Arminian's adoption, beset by the constant liability to fall, would 
bring little consolation indeed. It is love and confidence, not selfish 
fear, which most effectually stimulates Christian effort. Let the stu- 
dent see how St. Paul puts this in 1 Cor. xv : 58. 



LECTURE LVIL 



SYLLABUS. 
ASSURANCE OF HOPE. 

1. "What is the distinction usually made by Calvinists between the assurance 
of faith and the assurance of hope ? 

Conf. of Faith, ch. xvili. Ridgeley, que. 80, § i. Turrettin,Loc. xv, que. 
17, §3. 

2. State the doctrine of Rome concerning assurance, and her motives therein. 
Of the Reformers. Of the Westminster Assembly. 

Council of Trent, Session vi, ch. 9. Canons de Justin. 13, 14 Turrettin, 
que. 17, § 1-11. Calvin's Inst., Bk. iii, ch. ii, § 7. Hill, Bk. v, ch. 2. 

3. Is assurance of hope of the essence of saving faith ? 

Turrettiu, as above, § 8, 9- Ridgeley, que. 81. Hill, as above. Calvin, 
as above. Dick, Lect. 68. 

4. Prove that this assurance i3 attainable, and should be the aim of every 
true believer. 

Turrettin, as above, § 12-23. Ridgeley, que- 80. 

5. By what means is the believer to seek this assurance ? 

See Rom. viii : 16, with Calvin, Scott, and Hodge, in loco. Watson's The- 
ological Inst., ch. xxiv, § 2. Hill, as above. J. Newton's Sermons xx. 

6. Repiy to objections against the doctrine of assurance of hope, and espe- 
cially to the objection that it will foster sluggishness and carnal security. 

Turrettin, as above, § 36, 37, and Loc. iv, que. 13, § 21 to 23. Ridgeley, 
as above. Hill, as above. Dick, Lect. 78. 

I. Definitions. — The assurance of faith is that undoubting convic- 
tion which every justified person must have (except when buffetted by 
skeptical temptations) of the truth of the Gospel Proposition. The 
assurance of hope is that undoubting conviction which some attain, 
that they are true believers and penitents, and so, effectually called, 
elect, and infallibly destined to final salvation. 

Cavils against possibility of Assurance. — Many quibbles have 
been offered by Papists and rationalists to show that neither of these 



178 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

(and especially not the assurance of hope) can rise so high as to de- 
serve the name of an infallible assurance. If the latter did, it is 
urged, it should give a certainty of heaven equal to the certainty of 
our own existence, a certainty admitting of no degrees and no increase 
"by additions of subsequent evidence. But what sober believer can hon- 
estly claim this? Now, the answer to all this is easily found in an appeal 
to common sense. What does a man mean when he says he is sure of 
a thing? Why, that he clearly sees some evidence of its truth, which 
mounts above even the highest probability to demonstration. Any 
valid portion of such evidence is proper ground of certain conviction. 
Does this imply that the evidence cannot be increased, so that the cer- 
tainty shall have a wider basis? By no means. So, although it was 
certainty before, it now becomes a more satisfactory certainty. Again : 
Assurance of faith, and, still more, assurance of hope, embrace as ele- 
ments of evidence, the state of the soul's own moral affections. The 
latter, for instance, is based upon a consciousness of the exercise of 
trust, love, penitence, submission, and peace. Hence, to every one who 
knows human nature, it is manifest that, however demonstrative may 
be such evidence in its very highest and purest examples, the certainty 
based upon it will be much \uoxq felt and conscious, at some times than 
at others, because the actings of those holy emotions, and the soul's 
attention to and consciousness of their actings, are more lively at times 
than at others. Why ; will not the soul, after it is actually in heaven, 
have more lively attention to and consciousness of its present blessed- 
ness, at some times than at others? Does not the bereaved widow, 
who knows her loss only too well at all times, feel it far more sensibly 
at some times than at others? Third; it is a most incorrect analysis 
which either banishes the will from among the causes of belief, in 
cases of moral truths and evidences presented to the mind, or which 
denies that the certainty arising of such moral truths can be intellec- 
tually correct ; because there is a voluntary element in it. In the case 
of all moral objects of belief, conviction is far from being a bare in- 
tellectual result; the state of the will powerfully modifies it. (See my 
analysis of Saving Faith.) So obvious is this, that Des Cartes actually 
places belief among the emotional states of the soul. And yet, the 
rectitude of the state of will which concurs in producing a given 
moral conviction of mind, may itself be the object of the mind's cer- 
tain cognition. So that the mind, while aware that this mental con- 
viction has been produced in part by a state of will, as well as by a 
Light of evidence, shall also be certain that the will acted aright in that 
case; and hence, the given belief, though in part a result of volition, 
will be felt to be intellectually as valid as though it were a cold truth 
of abstract mathematics. If the student will remember, that the be- 
lief of this proposition, "I am now in a state of grace," or "I am 
not," is just one of those moral propositions concerning which the state 
of wil\ is most influential, he will see the application of these princi- 
ples. It will appear why the intellectual belief of such propositions 
should vary in its felt, strength ; viz : because the active and voluntary 
part of its elements vary. And it will appear that this degree of 
fluctuation (so to speak) is not at all incompatible with certainty, and 
a proper intellectual basis of evidence. To dispute this is as though 
one should say that, because the waters of the sea do not bear up the 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 179 

boat with the same immobility as a stone pedestal bears its statue, 
therefore the waters do not sustain the boat. The assurance of hope, 
in the breast of the true and eminent saint, is a certainty at its lowest 
ebbs ; at its higher floods it is both solid and joyful. 

Assurance a moral conviction, not a sense perception. — That 
the saint ought to know he is a saint as clearly as he knows that he 
breathes, is simply playing with words. Who does not know that 
sensational consciousness has a palpable element about it, which be- 
longs to no intellectual belief, not even that of the exact sciences? 
The scholar knows that "the square of the hypotheuuse is equal," &c; 
but he does not feel it, as he feels his existence. 

II. Komish doctrine touching Assurance. — Romanists deny that 
a certain assurance of hope can be attained, except in the case of those 
eminent saints and ascetics, to whom God gives it by special revela- 
tion — as to Stephen and Paul. In other cases, they judge it not at- 
tainable, not to be sought after, and not beneficial, even if attainable. 
Their motive is, obviously, to retain that power of priestcraft over 
souls, by which they may make gain of their absolutions, masses, in- 
dulgences, &c. The soul completely and finally justified in Christ, 
and assured thereof by grace, would be independent. 2 Cor. iii : 17. 

Reformers' Doctrine. — The earlier Reformers, having learned to 
abhor this trafficking in the peace of immortal souls, felt impelled to 
teach that assurance is of the essence of saving faith, (though com- 
pelled to modify their assertion, in order to include even Bible saints.) 
Thus, Calvin, Institute, Bk. iii, ch. 2, § 7 : "Faith is a steady and 
certain knowledge of the divine benevolence towards us," &c. Com. 
onRom.viii: 16. "Stat itaque Sententia, Neminern posse nomonari 
filium Dei, qui non se talem agnoscat." Of this, more anon. 

Arminian Doctrine. — The earlier Arminians (of Holland) taught 
that certain assurance of final salvation is not attainable in this life ; 
and that to doubt thereof is salutary, and conducive to humility. So 
far as assurance is predicated of our final perseverance, and our elec- 
tion, the later Arminians of Wesley's school must of course concur. 
But they teach, as one of their most distinctive points, that an assur- 
ance of present conversion (followed by some hope of final salvation) is 
not only possible, but essential to every true believer. And this is 
the immediate teaching of the Holy Ghost to the heart, without the Word 
or self-examination. Yet assurance of hope is not made by them of 
the essence of faith. First, say they, come repentance and faith, then 
justification, then regeneration, then this inwrought consciousness of 
adoption — faith itself being defined as a believing and embracing of 
the gospel. Here we have the mystico-scholastic notion of a revealed 
and immediate witness, borrowed from Rome through a Moravian me- 
dium by Wesley, and asserted as the privilege and attainment of 
every true convert. A still more direct historical channel may be 
found for the transmission of this doctrine into the Wesleyan System 
from the scholastic theology of the Romish monks. Wesley was a 
great admirer of Thomas a Kempis, of whose work he published an 
edition. Here, in the experience of this mystical scholastic, the idea 
appears in full form. 



180 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Doctrine of Westminster Assembly. — The Calvinistic world has 
dow generally settled down upon the doctrine of the Westminster 
Assembly, that assurance of hope is not of the essence of saving faith : 
so that many believers may be justified though not having the former : 
and may remain long without it ; but yet an infallible assurance, 
founded on a comparison of their hearts and lives with Scripture, and 
the teaching and light of the Holy Ghost, through and in the Word, is 
the privilege, and should be the aim of every true believer. Yet, this 
assurance, while both scriptural, reasonable and spiritual, and thus 
solid, may be more sensibly felt at sometimes, and may even be tempo- 
rarily lost through sin, according to the remarks of our section I. 

III. Assurance of Hope not of the essence of Faith, pkoved 
a.) by experience. — Before proceeding to argue this, let us briefly 
show (see Lect. on Faith,) what we have again asserted ; that assurance 
of hope is not of the essence of saving faith. First: not only do some, 
yea many, who give other excellent evidences by their fruits, in our 
days lack this assurance ; but some Bible saints lacked it at times. 
See Ps. xxxi: 22: lxxvii : 2, 3; Is. 1: 10, &c. These men did not 
therefore cease to be believers ? The proof is so obvious, that Calvin 
is obliged to modify the assertions of which we have seen specimens, to 
include these cases, until he has virtually retracted his doctrine. 

b.) The opposite would place another proposition as object of 
Faith. — Second: this doctrine really adds to the proposition which is 
the object of saving faith. That proposition is: " whosoever believeth 
shall be saved ;" and according to its very nature, it must follow that 
the moment it is believed, the sinner is saved, whether he sees any 
other truth or not. To teach the view of the first reformers, instead of 
exalting Christ, as they, with their modern imitators boastfully claim, 
really calls the soul away from Christ, and bids him look at another 
proposition touching the state and actings of his own soul, before he is 
permitted to trust in Christ. Our view scripturally directs him to find 
his comfort by looking wholly out of himself to Christ. Indeed, if we 
adhere strictly to the terms of the gospel, we shall see that the exercise 
of such a faith as Calvin describes is an impossibility, without a new 
and direct revelation in every case. Thus, no man is saved in Christ 
till he has come to believe that Christ has saved him. But it is only 
by believing that he is saved in Christ ; so that this definition of faith 
requires the effect to precede its own cause. The sinner must there- 
fore find out " the benevolence of Christ towards himself," not from 
the gospel promise, but from the Holy G-host directly, without the 
gospel. But are we ready for this 1 Do we surrender the great truth, 
that the Word is the object to which the Holy Ghost points the believ- 
ing sinner's soul ? 

Finally lost, could not be convicted for unbelief.— Third : if 
faith were such an exercise as this, when once the finally impenitent 
reach hell, it will no longer be fair to punish them for not believing unto 
salvation ; for it will then be manifest that had they believed in Christ's 
benevolence towards themselves, it would not have been true. So that 
in refusing to believe, they acted so far properly : the Holy Ghost never 
gave them a warrant to believe. 

Its Advocates refuted. — The scriptural argument for this ultra 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 181 

view of faith amounts mainly to this : that the Apostles generally ad- 
dress believers and speak of them as persons assured in their hope. 
e. g., 2 Cor. xiii : 5 ; v : 1 ; 1 Peter i : 8 and 9 ; 1 Jno. v : 19, &c. But 
the first of these passages, when properly construed, only says that men 
are reprobates unless they have Christ formed in them, not unless they 
recognize Him in them. And to all of them, we reply, that when the 
sacred writers thus address a whole church of professed believers in 
terms appropriate only to the best, they only use the language of Chris- 
tian hope, charity and courtesy. The proof is indisputable : for those 
very Corinthians are sharply rebuked by Paul, and exhorted to examine 
themselves jealously ; and John says that one object he had in writing 
his epistle, was to enable the people to come to an assurance of hope. 
2 Pet. i: 10; 1 Jno. iii : 9, 10. The we which these apostles use are 
often no others than the apostles themselves, with any Christians of like 
attainments. But there is also some justice in the surmise, that assu- 
rance of hope was more generally given in those primitive days, because 
the Church was called to testify, and to suffer more. So that if it should 
even appear that it was the common attainment of believers then, this 
would not prove it of the essence of faith. 

IV. Assurance attainable.— We argue that the assurance of hope 
is attainable, and should be sought by all believers; first, presump- 
tively ; 

Because it is our duty to be in Christ. — Because such a state of 
the case seems necessarily implied in the duty of seeking Christ. 
God makes it our duty to use means to place ourselves in union with 
Christ. Must there not be some way for us to know whether we have 
obeyed and do obey this command? It will not avail to say, that God 
makes it our duty to keep on striving just the same, to establish this union 
with Christ, to the end of life. True, He commands us to repeat our acts 
of faith and repentance all the time. But if we are not in Christ we 
have never believed aright, so that the thing we should be counselled to 
is, not to repeat those same abortive efforts, but to set about a new kind 
of efforts. See Rev. iii : 17, 18. 

Promises imply it. — Second : the Scripture is full of commands, 
prayers, and promises for assurance of hope. 1 Cor. xi : 28 ; 2 Cor. xiii : 
5 ; 1 Cor. ii : 12 ; John xiv : 20 ; Heb. vi : 18 ; 2 Pet. i ; 10 ; 1 Jno. ii : 
3 ; v: IS; iii ■ 14, &c. ; Rev. ii : 17. It is true that God commands us 
to be "perfect, as He is perfect," and to pray for entire conformity to 
Christ: while yet Calvinists do not believe that this perfection is attain- 
able in this life, by any. But here are commands of a more definite sort. 
e. g., 1 Cor. xi ; 28 ; 2 Cor. xiii : 5, commands to use an immediate means, 
self-examination, for the attainment of an end immediately connected 
therewith, namely, assurance. Here are promises given, Jno. xiv : 20, 
&<$., of the enjoyment of assurance. These things make out a different 
case. 

Has actually been attained. — Third : Both in Bible times and 
since, there have been instances of assurance actually enjoyed through 
God's blessing on the ordinary means of grace. Since the days of in- 
spiration, saints of the greatest sobriety and truthfulness have professed 
such assu ranee, and have been encouraged by it to brave the most 
fearful trials. Such cases are widely distinguished from the multi- 



182 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

tudes of fanatical self-deceivers. In Bible days we find a number of 
other cases. Ps. ciii : 2 ■ xvi : 8-10 ; Bom. v : 1 ; Gal. v : 22 ; 1 Thes. 
v : 9 ; 2 Tim. i : 12 ; 1 Pet. i : 8 ; 1 Jno. il ; 3 ; Phil, iv : 6, 7, &c. 

To these it has been objected, that they were inspired cases. Note, 
e. g., in 1 Pet. i : 8, the Apostle was inspired, but not the Christians 
to whom he wrote! Moreover, there are very few cases in Scripture 
where we see any individual receive a revealed assurance directly of 
his own interest in redemption. An examination will impress us how 
remarkably chary God has been of such helps; and how generally pecu- 
liar spiritual charisms were bestowed for the benefit of the Church, 
and not of the individual. 

Consciousness of graces skOuld give it. — Fourth : The nature of 
the graces in exercise in the Christian heart would show that the true 
believer ought to be able, with due care, to come to a certain know- 
ledge whether he has them. In other things, men can usually inter- 
pret their own consciousness with confidence ; they can certainly tell 
whether they love or hate, or believe in a fellow-man. Villains 
usually have a lurking consciousness that they are villains ; and efforts 
at self-deception are usually conscious. Eut Christian principles are 
described as peculiar, and as the very strongest principles of the soul. 
Why then should not the love, joy, peace, trust, submission, penitence, 
of a renewed heart become palpable to it, with due self-examination? 
We should remenber also, that God, by His providential trials, calls 
to duty and sacrifice for His sake and bereavements, speedily gives 
most believers excellent tests of genuine religious principles. It is 
objected, that "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately 
wicked." Who can know it? I reply, that the believer is not required 
to know everything about this deceitful heart, (an impossibility for 
him) in order to know his own conversion; but only to know some 
things. And moreover, in knowing these, he is promised the aids of 
the Holy Ghost. And this leads us. 

Holy Ghost promises it by His Witness. — Last. To argue from 
the witnessing of the Holy Ghost, His testimony with our spirits is 
promised, in various places and forms; and surely this pledges God, 
to make assurance a practicable attainment. See Born, viii : 16 ; Eph. 
i : 13 ; iv : 30 ; 2 Cor. i : 22 ; 1 Jno. ii : 27. 

We should never tolerate its absence. — Comparing sections 3 and 
4, we may see that although the dogma of the Beformers was erroneous, 
their practical feeling concerning the importance of assurance was 
much more correct than ours. The saints of that age did not, like so 
many now, sit year after year, in sinful indolence, complaining of the 
want of assurance, and yet indifferent to its cultivation. To them it 
was as the vital breath, to be either enjoyed perpetually, or else, if 
not enjoyed, to be sought with intense exertion. Now, we say, that 
while Faith may subsist without assurance of hope, every believer can 
and ought to attain in due time to the latter. And though it may bo 
lacking in a true Christian, yet no true Christian can be satisfied with 
its absence. If he feels the reality of heaven, he will wish to know 
whether it is to be his. If he truly believes there is a bell, he must 
earnestly long to be certified that he shall avoid it. He cannot be 
content to plod on, not knowing whether or not his feet are on the 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 183 

blood of the Redeemer, whom he loves, whether the viper, sin, which 
he hates, still enfolds his heart; whether he is to spend the'approach- 
ing eternity bathing his weary soul in seas of heavenly rest, or buffet- 
ing the fiery billows of wrath. A willingness to be ignorant of these 
things is proof of indifference. The chief reason why so many live on 
without assurance is, that they have no true faith. 

V. Means of Assurance. Self-examin/atioist, etc. — The means 
for attaining this assurance of hope are indicated by comparing the 
Confession, chap, xviii, § 1,2,3. In the first place, he who would seek 
it scripturally must be a true believer, (not clearly known to himself as 
such, for then there would be nothing farther to seek, but known as such 
to God.) Hence he who seeks long, without attaining, should probably 
do his first works again. In the next place, he should endeavor to live, 
in heart and life, in a consistent manner, exercising those principles and 
that conduct which the Scriptures ascribe to true children of God. For, 
in the third place, one means of assurance is the c mparison which the 
believer makes between the Bible description and his own heart and 
life. But the experience of Christians, I am persuaded, finds this pro- 
cess of self-examination and comparison rather an indirect than a direct 
means of assurance. For a faithful self-inspection usually reveals so 
much that is defective, that its first result is rather the discouragement 
than the encouragement of hope. But this leads the humbled Chris- 
tian to look away from himself to the Redeemer; and thus assurance, 
which is the reflex act of faith, is strengthened by strengthening the 
direct actings of faith itself. Now, if there is nothing, or little, in him- 
self which can be compared favorably, with the Bible-measuring rule, 
of course assurance cannot properly result". This comparison, then, is 
to be made in the work of self-examination, which must be honestly, 
thoroughly, and prayerfully performed. We say, prayerfully, for man's 
heart is deceitful : self-love, self-righteousness, spiritual pride, hope, 
and fear, are nearly interested in the decision, and the understanding 
of man is too feeble and uncertain an instrument, at best, to be trusted 
with the everlasting and irreparable issues of this question, when un- 
aided. 

Witness of Holy Ghost necessary. What is it 1 — Hence, in order 
to a scriptural and infallible assurance, there must be the witnessing of 
the Holy Ghost with our spirits. This witnessing, saith the Confession, 
is without extraordinary revelation. His operations here, are doubt- 
less w'iat they are, as to their degree and nature, in His other sanctify- 
ing operations through the Word; neither more nor less inscrutable, and 
just to the same extent supernatural. Thus, it is His to illuminate the 
soul, giving to the understanding spiritual apprehensions of Truth. It 
is His to shine upon His own work in our hearts, both brightening it, 
and aiding us in the comparison of it. It is His to quicken our right- 
eousness, caution, and impartiality, by renewing and sanctifying the 
dispositions, and quickening our apprehensions of the Divine Judge, 
and of the stake at issue. Thus the comparison between our graces 
and the Bible standard, is made under His superintendence and light; 
so that while He communicates no new revealed fact, contributes nothing 
new, so to speak, to the material of the comparison, or of the measuring- 
rule, the result of the measurement is reliable. If such a soul finds in 



184 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

itself the evident actings of such graces as the Bible calls for, then it 
has an assurance which is both scriptural, and reasonable, and spiritual. 
It is according to the rule of Scripture. It is reached according to the 
laws of the human understanding, intelligently and solidly. But best 
of all, it is also formed under the superintendence of the Holy Ghost, 
and He enables the humble, prayerful inquirer, to repose on it with "a 
hope inexpressible and full of glory." Such an assurance may well be 
called infallible. It may be aped indeed, so far as human judgment 
can distinguish, by false security ; but the difference is known to God, 
and to the believer, conscious as He is of thorough, candour humility 
and submission ; and the judgment day will reveal the difference. 

Wesleyan Doctrine of the Witness. — Now the ideas of the Wes- 
leyan concerning this witness of the Holy Ghost, are far different. He 
makes it indeed an independent revelation, by which the Holy Ghost 
reveals immediately to the convert's mind, without a mediate process 
of self-examination and comparison, that he is now reconciled. All 
the arguments on which they rely to establish this view, against ours, 
may be reduced to two : that two witnesses are said (Rom. viii : 16,) to 
concur, whereas our view seems to make no other testimony than that of 
our ownspirits(assisted indeed by the Holy Ghost,) and that the assurance 
cannot proceed mediately from the believer's consciousness of Christian 
affections within ; because those affections are only evoked by the assu- 
rance of our adoption. 1 Jno. iv : 19. To the first of these I reply, 
their view excludes the witnessing of the believer's spirit at least as 
much as our's seems to exclude that of God's. 

Replies. — But, how can this concurrence of two witnesses be better 
described than in such a case as we have supposed 1 We protest that 
our view does most fully and fairly avow the concurrence of God's 
Holy Ghost in the witnessing. He witnesseth along with our spirits. 
To the second argument, we reply that it is worthless to all except a 
Synergist. It is simply absurd, in our view, to assert that the believer 
can never have any regenerate exercises characteristic of the new life, 
until after he has an assurance of his adoption : when we believe, and 
have proved, that faith itself is a regenerate exercise, as well as repent- 
ance. Second : it is false that the renewed soul has no regenerate exer- 
cises till they are evoked by an assurance of its acceptance. This is not 
the sense of Jno. iv : 19. The first love of the new-born soul is not 
thus mercenary: it cannot help loving, and repenting, and adoring, 
though unconscious of hope. And last : surely the exhibition ot the 
goodness, grace, truth and love of God made to all sinners in Jno. iii : 16, 
is enough to evoke the first actings of love on the new-born sinner's part, 
while he is still unconscious of a personal hope. To say that a regenerate 
soul could look at this lovely exhibition of God's mercy towards "whoso- 
ever will receive it," and feel no love, because forsooth not yet assured 
of its own personal interest in it, is to say that that soul is still in 
the gall of bitterness. 

Refutation, farther. — This idea of an immediate witness we dis- 
pose, 1st, by the fact that self -examination is commanded, which would 
be superfluous to him already assured by a revelation. 2nd. Because 
Revelations have ceased, and Christians are now remanded to Scripture 
as the whole and sole source of all the religious informations needed to 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 185 

carry the soul to heaven. Jno. v. 39 ; 1 Cor. xiii: 8 ; 2 Tim. iii: 15- 
1 7. 3rd. It contradicts the experience of the very best converts [tried 
by their fruits,] who often exhibit good marks of penitence, submission, 
love : when their souls are so absorbed by the sense of God's holiness 
and majesty, and their own vileness, that they dare not rejoice in their 
acceptance. And it equally contradicts the experience of maturer con- 
verts, who usually have their assurance dawn slightly, and grow gradu- 
ally, as their experience and graces grow. See Is. xlii : 16 ; Kom. v : 4. 
4th. It opens the doors for untold self-deceptions, mistaking the whispers 
of self-love, carnal security, spiritual pride, fanaticism, or Satan, for 
this super scriptural witness. The most biting argument against it is 
in the History of Wesleyan revivals, with their spurious conversions. 
Jno. Wesley was himself so sensible of this objection, that he appeals 
to the other concurrent witnessing : that of the Christian's conscious^ 
ness compared with Scripture to show him that the previous witness is 
the Holy Ghost, not a delusion. This virtually surrenders his dogma : 
for this witness of the believer's spirit, although mentioned last, is in 
reality precedent in order. As the ambassador's credentials must pre- 
cede his recognition, so this witnessing of the conscious graces in the 
heart must give credence to the immediate impression ! 

VI. Ejects of Assurance Holy. — Assurance of hope, scripturally 
founded, will result in advantage only. It increases spiritual joy. 
Thus it promotes usefulness. Nehemiah viii : 10. It unseals the heart 
to praise God. It stimulates evangelical labours. 1 Cor. xv : 58. It 
nerves us for self-denial. It lifts us above carnal temptations. Phil. 
iv:7. 

Some have thought the assurance of hope arrogant, as though it 
were modest and seemly to be in suspense concerning our salvation. I 
answer ; If we expected to save ourselves, so it would be. To be in 
suspense whether Christ is able, and willing, and faithful, surely is no 
mark of our humility ; but, on the contrary, it is a dishonor to Him. 

The main objection, however, is, that assurance, coupled with the 
doctrine of perseverance of saints, will become the sure occasion of 
spiritual indolence and carnal security. We reply, that if an unre- 
newed man should persuade himself unscripturally that he is in Christ, 
this result would surely follow. But how can it follow to that man 
who scripturally founds his hope on the existence in himself of a dis- 
position to flee from sin, strive after holiness, and fight the good fight 
of faith 1 He hopes he is a Christian, only because he sees reason to 
hope that he shall strive to the end. The perception in himself of the 
depraving consequence charged above, would at once vitiate the evi- 
dence that he was, or ever had been, a child of God, just in proportion 
as it was realized. The watchful garrison are confident that they shall 
not fall victims to a surprise, because they intend to watch. Such assu- 
rance only stimulates effort. The drunken rioters go to sleep flattering 
themselves they shall not be surprised ; but this is presumption, not 
assurance. In the actual experiences of Christians, he who enjoys the 
grace of assurance ever walks most carefully and tenderly before hia 
God, lest the precious elixir be lost through negligence. See Ps. 
cxxxix : 21, 24 ; 2 Cor. 5:6-9; Heb. vi : 9-12. 



i86 SYLLABUS AIsTD NOTES 

LECTUEE LVIII. 



SYLLABUS. 

PRAYER. 

1. "What is the definition, and what the parts of prayer ? 

Conf. of Faith, ch. xxi. Sh. Cat., qne. 98 to end, Directory of Worship, 
chs. v. and xv. Dick, Lect. 93. Ridgeley, que. 178. 

2. Who is the proper object of prayer ? 
Dick, Lect. 93. Ridgeley, que. 179. 

3. What are the proper grounds by which the duty of prayer is sustained and 
enforced ? 

Pictet. Bk. 8, ch. 10. Dick, Lect. 93. Hill, Bk. v., ch. v,, §3. Knapp, 
§133, Appendix. 

4. Refute the objections to the reasonableness of prayer, drawn from God's 
omniscience, immutability, independence, decrees ; and from the stability of Na- 
ture. 

Southern Presb. Rev., Jan. 1870, Art. I. Chalmer's Nat. Theol. Bk. v, ch. 
3. Dick, Lect. 93. McCosh's Div. Gov., Bk. ii, ch. 2, § 5, 6. 

5. What is the rule of prayer, and what the qualities of acceptable prayer ? 
Dick, as above, and Lect. 94. Pictet, as above. Ridgeley, que. 185, 186. 

6. What is the nature and extent of the warrant given us to expect answers ? 
See, e. g., Matt, vii: 7, 8. Murk, xi : 24. Dick, Lect. 94. Pictet, as above. 
Dr. Leonard Wood's Lectures, 95-99. 

7. Show that prayer should be both secret, social, ejaculatory, and stated. 
Dick, Lect. 94. 

8. What model is given for our prayers ? Dick, Lect. 95. See on the Whole. 

Magee on Atonement, dissertation 8th ; and Dr. Leonard Wood's Lectures, 
95 to 99. 

I. Definition. — "Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God 
for things agreeable to His will, in the name of Christ, with confession 
of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of His mercies." 

Its several parts are stated, in the Directory for Worship, to be ado- 
ration, thanksgiving, confession, petition, intercession and pleading. 
See Directory, Ch. v. § 2. 

II. God the only proper object. — God alone is the proper object 
of religious worship. Matt, iv : 10. The general reason for this is, 
that He alone possesses the attributes which are implied in the offer of 
religious worship. The Being who is to be worshipped by all the 
Church must be omniscient. Otherwise our prayers would never reach 
His ears. And if conveyed to Him, they would utterly confound and 
overwhelm any finite understanding, in the attempt to distinuish, com- 
prehend, and judge concerning them. Then, moreover, the Beiug to 
whom we resort in prayer must be all-wise, in order to know infallibly 
what is best for us, and how to procure it. Such omniscience as we 
have above described implies, of course, omnipresence. Second. This 
Lord must be infinitely good: otherwise we should have no sufficient 
warrant to carry Him our wants; and His benevolence would be over- 
taxed by such constant and innumerable appeals. Third. He must be 
almighty ; else he is no adequate refuge and dependence for our souls, 
in all exigencies. Some most urgent wants and dangers might arise, 
which only omnipotence could meet. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 18Y 

Prayer may be to the persons of trinity. — For these reasons 
the offering of prayer is a virtual ascription of divinity to its object : 
and we reject all such appeals to saints and angels as idolatrous. For us 
sinners, the door of prayer is only opened by the Covenant of Grace. 
(Why ?) Npw we have seen that God the Father stands economically as 
the representative of the whole Trinity, or the part of the Godhead, as 
Christ the Son stands as sinner's representatives in that transaction. 
Hence prayer is usually addressed to the Father through the Son, and by 
the Spirit. Eph. ii : 18. But we must not imagine that one person is 
more properly the object of prayer than another. All are made alike 
objects of worship, in the apostolic benediction, 2 Cor. xiii : 14, in 
the formula of baptism, and in Kev. i: 4. But more: we find Jesus 
Christ, so to speak, the separate object of worship, in Gen. xviii ; 
23; Josh, v: 14; Acts vii: 59; Rev. i : 17; v: 8; Heb. i : 6, &c. 
These examples authorize us to address a distinct petition to either of 
the persons. 

III. The duty reasonable. a.) It cultivates piety. — The duty 
of prayer reposes immediately on God's command : who " wills that 
men pray every where." 1 Tim. ii : 8, But this is a precept which 
most eminently commends itself to every man's conscience in the sight 
of God, because so clearly founded in nature. That is, there are nu- 
merous and powerful reasons proceeding out of our very relations to 
God, for the duty of prayer. That this is true is obviously suggested 
by the strength of the instiuct of devotion in every rational breast. 
The immediate prompting of the sense of want or sin, in the creature, 
is to make him say, " Lead me to the rock that is higher than I." 
Ps. lxi : 2. And to pray is mentioned of Saul as the characteristic 
evidence that he had learned to fear God. Acts ix : 11. Wherever 
there is religion, true or false, there is prayer. Even the speculative 
atheist, when pressed by danger, has been known to belie his pretended 
creed, by calling in anguish upon the God whom he had denied. This 
natural instinct of prayer reposes for its ground on God's perfections, 
and man's dependence and wants. And so long as these two facts 
remain what they are, man must be a praying creature. Let the stu- 
dent remember, also, that man, while finite and dependent, is also an 
essentially active creature. Emotion, and the expression of emotion, 
are the unavoidable, because natural, outgoings of his powers. He 
cannot but put forth his activity in efforts tending to the objects of his 
desires ; he must cease first to be man : and prayer is the inevitable, 
the natural effort of the dependent creature, in view of exigencies 
above his own power. To tell him who believes in a God, not to pray, 
is to command him to cease to be a man. 

Is God's due. — Second: Prayer is the natural homage due from the 
creature to his heavenly Father, God being Himself all-blessed, and 
the sole Source and Giver of blessedness, can receive no recompense 
from any creature. But is no form of homage therefore due ? To say 
this, would be to say that the creature owes God nothing, because 
God bestows so much ! It would extirpate religion practically from 
the universe. Now, I assert, in opposition to the Rationalistic Deists, 
(Kant, Bolingbroke, &c.,) who say that the only reasonable homage is 
a virtuous life, and the cultivation of right emotions, that prayer also 



188 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

is more directly, and still more naturally, that reasonable homage. 
God must bestow on man all the good he receives; then man ought to 
ask for all that good. It is the homage to God's beneficent power, ap- 
propriate to a creatue dependent, yet intelligent and active. Man 
ought to thank God for all good ; it is the natural homage due from 
receiver to giver. Man ought to confess all his sin and guilt; it is the 
natural homage due from sinfulness to sovereign holiness. Man ought 
to deprecate God's anger ; it is the appropriate homage due from con- 
scious guilt to power and righteousness. Man ought to praise God's 
perfections. Thus only can the moral intelligence God has created, 
pay to Him its tribute of intellectual service. I should like to see 
the reasoning analysed by which these skeptics are led to admit that the 
creature does owe to God the homage of a virtuous life and affections. 
I will pledge myself to show that the same reasoning equally proves 
he owes the homage of prayer. Conceive of God as bestowing all the 
forms of good on man which his dependent nature needs, without re- 
quiring any homage of prayer from man as the means of its bestowal ; 
and you will immediately have, man being such as he is, (an active 
being,) a system of practical atheism. Religion, relation between 
man and God will be at an end. True, God would be related to man, 
but not man to God ! Anomalous and guilty condition ! No feeling 
of dependence, reverence, gratitude, wholesome fear, would find ex- 
pression from the creature. 

Is means of Gra.ce, per se. — This leads us, third, to the important 
remark, that prayer is the natural means of grace appropriate to the 
creature. Prayer is not intended to produce a change in God, but in 
us. Rev. Roland Hill to sailors: "The man in the skiff at the stern 
of a man-of-war, does not pull the ship to himself, in hauling at the 
line, but pulls the skiff to the ship. This line is prayer. Prayer 
does not draw God down to us, but draws us up to God, and thus es- 
tablishes the connexion. Now, as we have seen, man being an essen- 
tial active creature, the exercise of all those right affections which 
constitute gracious character necessitates their expression. And again, 
to refuse expression to an affection chokes it; to give it its appropriate 
expression fosters and strengthens it. See examples. We see at once, 
therefore, how prayer is a natural and necessary means for all gracious 
growth. Let us exemplify in detail. Faith is a mother grace to all 
others ; but prayer is the natural and necessary expression of faith : 
it is its language, its vital breath. In spiritual desires the life of 
religion may be said to consist. Desire is implied in faith itself, for 
a man does not trust for what he does not want, and it is yet more 
manifest in hope. For hope is but desire, encouraged by the prospect 
of obtaining the desired object. Repentance includes a desire for de- 
liverance from sin and attainment of holiness. Love of God includes 
a desire for communion with Him, and for His favour. So that it 
would not be very inaccurate to say that practical religion consists in 
the exercise of holy desires. Rut what is prayer, except "the offering 
up of our desires to God?" Prayer is the vital breath of religion in 
the soul. Again, it cultivates our sense of dependence and of God's 
sovereignty. Ry confessing our sins, the sense of sin is deepened. 
By rendering thanks, gratitude is enlivened. Ry adoring the divine 
perfections, we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 189 

From all this it is apparent that prayer is the Christian's vital breath. 
If God had not required it, the Christian would be compelled to offer 
it by his own irrepressible promptings. If he were taught to believe 
that it was not only useless, but wrong, he would doubtless offer it in 
his heart in spite of himself, even though he were obliged to accom- 
pany it with a petition that God would forgive the offering. To have 
no prayer is, for man, to have no religion. 

Chiefly ; is ordained in God's promises. — But last, and chiefly, 
prayer is a means of grace, because God has appointed it as the instru- 
ment of man's receiving His Spiritual influences. It is enough for the 
Christian to know that all his growth in grace is dependent, and that 
God hath ordained : " he that asketh receiveth." 

Thus we see the high and essential grounds on which the duty of 
prayer rests, grounds laid in the very natures of God and of man, and 
in the relations between the two. 

IV. Reasonableness of prayer objected to. — But it is from the 
nature of God that the rationalistic objections are drawn against the 
reasonableness of the duty. It is said, " Since God is omniscient, there 
is no meaning in our telling Him our wants, for He knows them al- 
ready, better than we do. Since He is good, He already feels every 
proper impulse to make us happy, and to relieve our pains ; and does 
not need any persuading on our part, to incline Him to mercy. And 
since He is immutable, and has already determined from eternity, every 
act of His future agency, by an unchangeable decree, to hope to change 
God by our importunity, is worse than useless, it is a reproach to Him. 
Hence there is nothing for the wise man to do, but to receive His allot- 
ments with calm submission, and to honour Him by imitating His moral 
perfections." 

General reply. — We reply to him who had any reverence for the 
Scripture these assertions of God's wisdom and goodness would be ar- 
guments to prove, instead of disproving, the propriety of prayer. For 
has not this wise and good being commanded prayer f Has he not seen 
fit to appoint prayer as the instrument for receiving His purposed bles- 
sings ? Then, to the humble mind, there is the best proof that prayer 
is reasonable. But farther, we have already remarked that, so far as 
prayer is intended to produce any change, it is not a change in God, 
but in us. He does not command it because He needs to be informed 
of our wants, or to be made willing to help. He commands it because 
He has seen fit to ordain it as the appointed means for reception of His 
blessings. And we have seen abundant reasons why it is a suitable 
means to be thus ordained : a wise means, a right means. It is a ne- 
cessary and instinctive outgoing of the rightly feeling soul. It is the 
proper homage for man to render God. It is an influence wholesome 
for man's soul itself. And now, God having seen these good reasons 
(doubtless with others) for ordaining prayer as the means of receiving 
His favour, there is nothing in His wisdom, goodness, or immutability, 
inconsistent with his regular enforcement of the rule, " ask, and ye 
shall receive." 

God's Benevolence No Objection: — Not in His goodness : For if 
any one should take such a view of the Divine benevolence as to sup- 
pose that it will in every case bestow on the creature such blessings as 
God's nature and purpose permit, without requiring to be persuaded 



190 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

by the creature's use of means, the whole course of His providence 
would refute it. God is benevolent in bestowing on multitudes of 
farmers the fruits of the earth. If any one trusts to His immutable 
goodness, without ploughing and sowing his field, he will certainly be 
disappointed. The truth is just here : that God is infinitely benevo- 
lent, but still it is a benevolence exercised always in harmony with His 
wisdom, and with all His other attributes. The question then is; 
Have God's wisdom, sovereignty, and other attributes, impelled him to 
decide that he cannot consistently give some particular gifts except to 
those that ask? If so, it is vain to argue from His infinite goodness. 
His Immutability No Objection. — Nor do God's decree and un- 
changeableness show that it is inconsistent in Him to answer prayer. 
His immutability does not consist in acting with a mechanical same- 
ness, irrespective of change of circumstances. It is an immutability 
of principles. The sameness of principle dictates a change of conduct 
when outward circumstances change. To refuse to change in such cases 
would often be mutability. And the familiar old answer here applies, 
that God's decree embraces the means as much as the end. Wherever 
it was his eternal purpose that any creature should receive grace, it 
was his purpose equally that he should ask. In a word, these objec- 
tions are just the same with those of the vulgar fatalist, who objects 
that, because what is to be will be," therefore it is of no use to make 
any effort. There is no difference whatever in the refinement or wis- 
dom of the objectors. To be consistent, these rationalists who refuse 
to pray should also refuse to plough, to sow, to cultivate, to take medi- 
cine when sick, to watch against danger, &c. 

Objection from Stability of Nature. — The difficulty, however, 
which is now thought most formidable, and is most frequently advanced 
by Eationalists, is that drawn from the stability of nature. The argu- 
ment of the objection is, that except where God acts supernaturally, as 
in regeneration and the resurrection, He acts only through second 
causes ; that the tie between cause and effect is efficient, and the result 
regular; so that each effect is potentially in its antecedent cause, which 
is, very probably, an event that has already occurred, and is therefore 
irrevocable. Hence, it is impossible but that the effect must follow, 
pray as we may against it; unless God will miraculously break the ties 
of natural causation ; but that, we know, He will not do. 

General Reply. — Now, this is either an argument ad ignorantiam, or 
it is atheistic. The simple, popular (and sufficient) view which refutes it 
is : That God governs this world in every natual event through His special 
providence ; and the regular laws of nature are only the uniform modes 
of those second causes, which He employs to do so. Now, the objection 
is simply this : that God has constructed a machine, which is so per- 
fect, and so completely His, that He cannot modify its action without 
breaking it! That is, His success has been so complete, in construct- 
ing this machine of nature to work His intended ends, that He has shut 
Himself out of His own handiwork ! Such is the absurdity which the 
matter must wear in the hands of a theist. Nature is a machine which 
God made and now uses to effect a set of ends, all of which were fore- 
seen and purposed ; and among which were all the destined answers to 
the acceptable prayers foreseen to be uttered. Of course God has not 
so made it as to exclude Himself and His own purposes. How does He 



OF LECTURES fN THEOLOGY. 191 

manage the machine to make it work those purposes ? We may not 
know how ; hut this is no evidence that He does not. The inference 
from His general wisdom and promise is proof enough that He can and 
does. A very good illustration may be taken from a railroad train. 
It is propelled, not by an animal which has senses to hear command^ 
but by a steam engine. The mechanical force exerted is irresistible 
by man. The conditions of its movement are the most rigidly metho- 
dical ; only up and down one track, within certain times. But there is : 
a Conductor ; and his personal will can arrest it at the request of the 
feeblest child. 

Prayer a Part of the General Law. — But to be more exact : The 
objector urges that the general laws of nature are stable. Grant it. 
What is nature t It is a universe of matter and mind related, and not 
of matter only. Now only postulate that desire, prayer, and the 
answers to prayer are among those general laws, which, as a complex 
whole, have been assigned to regulate nature, and the uniformity of 
nature only confirms the hope of answers to prayers. Has the philoso- 
pher explored all the ties of" natural causation made by God. He does 
not pretend so. Then it may be that among the unexplored ties are 
some subtle and unexplained bonds which connect prayers with their 
answers as natural causes and effects. And all that we have said, in 
showing how natural prayer is to creatures, makes the postulate pro- 
bable. 

God Rules by Hrs Laws of Nature as He Pleases.— "Again. Does 
natural law govern the universe 1 Or, does God govern it by natural 
law 1 Men perpetually cheat themselves with the idea that law is a 
poioer, whereas it is simply the method of a power. Whence the power 
of the natural second cause ? Originally from God ; and its working is 
maintained and regulated by God. Hence it is utterly improbable 
(whether we can comprehend or not) that God should have so arranged 
His own power communicated to His works as to obstruct His own per- 
sonal will. Remember that God is personal, and not a mere anima 
mundi. He is a sovereign moral Person. 

His Providence in All Second Causes. — Last, recurring to the 
views given in explanation of God's providence (Lect. XXIV, Part I), 
you will be reminded, that power in second causes only acts when the 
suitable relations are established between them and those things which 
are to be the recipients of the effects : that among all possible relations,, 
many might be fruitful of no effects, and others of very different effects : 
That hence, there is here, room for the perpetual, present manipulation 
of the invisible Hand in providence. Thus, God always has resources 
to modify the acting of natural causes, they still acting according to 
their natures. As I remarked : All God's providence is special; and, 
the supernatural is always with the natural ; else the latter could not 
be. 

V. Rule of prayer. — The proper rule of prayer is the whole word 
of God. Not only are its instances of inspired devotion our exemplars, 
and its promises our warrant ; its precepts are the measure of our peti- 
tions, and its threatenings the stimulants. There is no part of Scrip- 
ture which may not minister to the guidance of the Christian's 
prayers. But further, the Word of God is the rule of our prayers 



192 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

also in this sense, that all which it does not authorize^ is excluded; 
Prayer being a homage to God, it is for Him to say what worship He 
will accept ; all else is not homage, but presumption. Again, both 
man's blindness and corruption, and God's infinitude forbid that we 
should undertake to devise acts of worship of our own motion. They 
will be too apt to partake of some of our depravity, or else to lead in 
some way unforseen to us, to developments of depravity. And God's 
nature is too inscrutable to our feeble minds, for us to undertake to 
infer from it, except as as we are guided by the light of the Word. 
Hence, the strict Protestant eschews " will worship,'" as a breach of the 
decalogue. 

Qualities op Acceptable Prayer. — When we examine the inspired 
rule of prayer, we find that to be acceptable, it must be sincere and 
hearty ; it must be addressed to God with faith in Christ ; it must be 
for objects agreeable to God's will ; it must be prompted by the Holy 
Ghost; it must be accompanied with genuine repentance and gratitude. 
See Ps. Ixii : 8 ; Jer. xxix : 13 ; Jno. xiv ; 6 ; 1 Jno. v : 15 ; Rom. viii : 
26 ; Phil, ii : 6, 7 ; 1 Jno. iii : 22 ; Ps. lxvi : 18 ; Heb. xi : 6, &c. 

The more immediate model which God has given for our prayer, is 
the Lord's prayer. That it was not intended for a liturgy to be ser- 
vilely followed, our authors have shown, in their discussions of litur- 
gies. But that it Was intended both as a general guide in the structure 
of our own petitions, and as a form whose very words are to be em- 
ployed by us on proper occasions, is manifest, c. f. Matt, vi : 9 ; 
Luke xi : 2. The most plausible objection to it, as a model for Chris- 
tians is, that it contains no express reference to a Mediator, and 
answer through His merit and intercession. The answer is, that it is 
an old Testament prayer : is intended as such, because that dispensa- 
tion was still standing. When it was about to close, Christ completed 
this feature of it, by enjoining the use of His name. See John xiv : 
13; xv : 16; xvi: 23,24. 

VI. Extent of Warrant for Answer. — We apprehend that there 
is much vagueness in the views of Christians concerning the nature and 
extent of the warrant which they have to expect an answer to their 
prayers. Some err by defect, forming no definite view of the ground 
on which their faith is entitled to rest ; and consequently, approaching 
the throne of Grace with no lively hopes whatever. Others err by ex- 
cess, holding the promises in a sense God did not intend them to bear; 
and consequently their hopes are fanatical and superstitious. Now, in 
order that our faith may be firm, it must be correct and intelligent. 
The consequence of these erroneous views ultimately is disappointment, 
and hence, either self-accusation, or skepticism. 

Extreme view described and refuted. — The warrant for prayer 
is of course to be sought, immediately, in the promises. Of these 
some seem very emphatic ; e. g., Matt, vii ; 7 ; Mark xi : 24. On 
promises of the latter class especially, some have built a theory of 
prayer, thus : that the only reason any prayer of one in a state of 
grace, and actuated in the main by pious motives, is not specifically 
and infallibly answered, is that it was not offered in faith, and that 
wherever such a saint fully believes that he shall receive that which he 
asks, he will receive it, as surely as inspiration. And such prayer it 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 193 

was the fashion to dignify with the title, "the prayer of faith," among 
some religionists. In opposition, I would urge that common sense 
refutes it; and shows that practically there is a limitation to these 
general promises of answer to prayer. Who believes that he can, 
provided his motives are in the main pious, pray away a spell of ill- 
ness, or raise up a sick friend, or convert an individual sinner, with 
infallible certainty. But may they hot put in a saving clause by say- 
ing: "Such prayers are dictated by the Holy Ghost? This makes all 
right." Ans.: The Christian has no mode of distinguishing the spe<- 
cific cases of spiritual impulse in his own heart; because the Holy 
Ghost operates in and through his natural capacities. Hence, to th& 
Christian,) the universal warrant is practically lacking. It is mani- 
festly incompetent to the Christian to say, in advance of the answer : 
The Spirit dictates this prayer beyond doubt. Second : Scripture re- 
futes it ; for there are clear cases of petitions of Bible saints, made 
in faith, piety, urgency, and not specifically answered. See 2 Sam-, 
xii; 16, 19; 2 Cor. xii : 8-10; and above all, Matt, xxvi : 39. And 
third : We can hardly suppose that Grod would abdicate His omnisci- 
ence in His dealings towards the very objects of His redeeming love, 
and make their misguided, though pious desires the absolute rule of 
His conduct towards them. This would be the literal result, were He 
absolutely pledged to do for shortsighted Christians exactly what they, 
with pious motives, ask of Him. We may add here, that such an as- 
sumption is refuted by God's claim to chastise believers for their profit. 
They of course pray, and innocently pray for exemption. (" Remove 
Thy stroke from me ; for I am consumed by the blow of thy hand.") 
If God were under bond to hear every prayer of faith, He would have 
to lay down the rod in each case, as soon as it was taken up. 

Scriptural Limitations to Warrant. — There is then, of course, 
some practical limitation in these general promises. What is it? I answer, 
it is to be found in the whole tenour of Scripture. And generally in the 
language of 1 Jno. v: 14. All our prayers shall be specifically an- 
swered, in God's time and way, but with literal and absolute accuracy, 
if they are believing and pious prayers, and for things according to 
GooVs will. Now there are only two ways to find out what things are 
such : one is by special revelation, as in the case of the faith of mira- 
cles, and petitions for them ; the other is by the Bible. Here the 
explanation of that erroneous view of the warrant of prayer, above de- 
scribed, is made easy and plain. It is said that if the Christian prays 
with right motives, and with an assured belief that he shall obtain, he 
will obtain : no matter what he asks, (unless it be something unlawful.) 
Yes, but what warrant has he for the belief that he shall obtain? 
Faith, without an intelligible warrant, is sheer presumption. Suppose, 
for instance, the object of petition is the recovery of a sick friend ; 
where does the applicant read God's pledge of a specific answer to that 
prayer? Certainly not in Scripture. Does he pretend a direct spir- 
itual communication ? Hardly. He has no specific warrant at all ; 
and if he works himself up into a notion that he is assured of the an- 
swer, it is but a baseless fantasy, rather insulting than honourable to 
God. I know that pious biography is full of supposed instances of 
this kind, as when Luther is said to have prayed for the recovery of 



194 ^ SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Melancthon. These are the follies of good men ; and yet G-od's abound- 
ing mercy may in some cases answer prayers thus blemished. 

Two classes of Good. The Warrant for first only is abso- 
lute. — We return then to Scripture, and ask again, what is the extent 
of the warrant there found 1 The answer is, that G-od, both by pro- 
mise and example, clearly holds out two classes of objects for which 
Christians pray. One is tbe class of which an instance has just been 
cited — objects naturally desirable, and in themselves innocent, which 
yet are not essential to redemption, such as recovery from sickness, re- 
covery of friends, good name, daily bread, deliverance from persecu- 
tion, conversion of particular sinners, &c, &c. It is right to pray for 
such things; it is even commanded; and we have some ground, in the 
benevolence, love, and power of God, and tender sympathy of the 
Mediator, to hope for the specific answer. But still the truest believer 
will offer those prayers with doubts of receiving the specific answer ; 
for the simple reason that Grod has nowhere specifically promised to 
bestow it. The enlightened believer urges such petitions, perhaps 
warmly; but still all are conditioned on an "if it be possible," "if 
it be consistent with God's secret will." And he does not know 
whether he shall receive or not, just because that will is still secret. 
But such prayers, offered with this general trust in God's power, ben- 
evolence and better wisdom, and offered iu pious motives, are accepted, 
even though not answered, cf. 2 Cor. xii : 8, with v. 9 ; Matt, xxvi : 
39 ; with Heb. v : 7. God does not give the very thing sought, though 
innocent in itself; He had never promised it; but He "makes all 
things work together for good to the petitioner." This should be 
enough to satisfy every saint. 

The other class of objects of prayer is, the benefits accompanying 
redemption : all the gifts which make up, in the elect, growth in grace, 
perseverance, pardon, sanctification, complete redemption. For these 
we pray with full assurance of a specific answer, because God has told 
us, that it is His purpose specifically to bestow them in answer to all true 
prayer. See Ps. lxxxiv : 11 ; Luke xi : 13 ; 1 Thess. iv: 3 ; Luke xii : 
32 ; John xv : 8. So, we have a warrant to pray in faith, for the grace 
to do the things which God's word makes it our duty to do. In all 
such cases, our expectation of an answer is entitled to be as definite as 
was that of Apostles, when inspired with the faith of miracles. G-od 
may not give it in the shape or channel we expected ; He may choose 
to try our faith by unexpected delays, but the answer is sure, because 
definitely promised, in His own time and way. Here we may say, 
Heb. ii : 3, " For the vision 25 yet for an appointed time, but at the 
end it shall speak, and not lie : though it tarry, wait for it ; because it 
will surely come, it will not tarry." 

Promises Confirmed. — In addition to the promises, our expectation 
of an answer to prayer is strengthened by the following precious con- 
siderations, a.) When we pray for things agreeable to God's will, we 
virtually pray for what will promote His glory and good pleasure. 
We are like the industrious servant petitioning to a wise master, for a 
new tool or implement in order to work better for him. b.) Such 
prayers are prompted by the Holy Ghost, and therefore (Rom. viii : 
27,) are surely destined to be answered, because the good and truthful 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 195 

God would not evoke such desires only in order to repulse them, c.) 
Our union to Christ confirms this ; because we know that the sap of 
spiritual affections circulates in us from Him our Root : so that the way 
we come to have a good desire is, by His having it first. Now, if He 
desires that thing too, we shall be like to get it. d.) Christ's interces- 
sion, so tender and generous, so prevalent, and perpetual, presents the 
most glorious ground of hope. He rejects no pious applicant. He 
ever liveth to intercede. The Father heareth Him always. Hence, 
Heb. iv: 15, 16. 

VII. Prayer should be social and secret, stated and ejacu- 
latory. — We are commanded to " pray always," "without ceasing." 
That is, the temper of prayer should be always prevalent : and ejac- 
ulatory prayer should be habitual, and frequent as our spiritual 
exigencies. But it is also our duty to pray statedly : the morning and 
evening, at least, being obviously proper stated seasons for secret, and 
the Lord's day, at least, for social and public prayer. The reason is, 
that man, a finite creature, controlled so greatly by habit, cannot well 
perform any continuous duty, without a season appropriated to it ; and 
that, a stated season. He needs all the aids of opportunity and leisure. 
Nor is there any incompatibility of such stated seasons, with our de- 
pendence on the Holy Ghost for ability to offer acceptable prayer. 
Some Christians seem to be infected with the Quaker idea, that because 
all true prayer is prompted by the Spirit, it is best not to attempt the 
duty at the stated hour, if his afflatuos is not felt. The folly of this 
appears from our Saviour's words : " Behold I stand at the door and 
knock." The Spirit is always waiting to prompt prayer. His com- 
mand is, to pray always. If, at the appointed hour, an indisposition to 
pray is experienced, it is our duty to regard this as a marked symptom 
of spiritual want ; and to make it a plea for the petition, "Lord, teach 
us to pray." 

Again : Man must join in acts of social and public worship, because 
he is a social being ; and hence he derives important aids in the difficult 
work of keeping alive the spirit of prayer within him. It is also his 
duty to glorify God before his fellow-creatures, by these public acts of 
homage, and to seek to benefit his fellows by the example of them. Yet 
the duty of public worship does not exclude that of secret. See Matt, 
vi : 6. Every soul is bound to pray statedly in secret, because of the 
example of Christ and the saints ; because the relation between God 
and the soul is direct and personal, admitting no daysman but Christ : 
because secret prayer is the best test and cultivation of the spirit of 
true devotion: because each soul has special sins, mercies, wants, of 
which he should speak confidentially to his God ; and because there is 
in secret prayer the most childlike and unrestrained intercourse be- 
tween God and the soul. So important are these facts, that we may 
usually say, that he who has no habit of secret prayer has no spirit of 
of prayer at all. 



196 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

LECTUKE LIX 



SYLLABUS, 
THE SACRAMENTS. 

1. "What is a sacrament ? 

See Ccmf. of Faith, ch. xxvii, § 1. Turrettin, Loc. xix, que, 1. Hill, Bk, 
v, ch. v, § 4. Dick, Lect. 86. Eidgeley, que. 162. Council of Trent* 
Sess. 7. Can. 1-13, and Catechism. Rom. pt. ii, que. 2, 3. 

2. Are the sacraments mere symbols or badges, as say the Socinians, or also, 
seals of the Covenant? 

Turrettin, que. 5. Hill and Ridgeley, as above. 

3. "What the parts of the sacrament ? And what the qualities requisite in the 
material parts ? 

Turrettin, que. 3, Dick, Lect. 86. Ridgeley, que. 163, C on f. of Faith 
ch. xxvii, § 2. 

4. What is the sacramental union between these parts ? 
Turrettin, que. 4. Dick, as above. 

5. How many sacraments under the New Testament ? 

Conf. of Faith, as above, § 4. Turrettin, que. 31. Council of Trent, as 
above, and Rom. Catechism, pt. 2, que. 11, 12. Dick, Lect, 87, Burnett,, 
on the Thirty-nine Articles, Art. 25. 

6. How many sacraments under the Mosaic dispensation : and what their re- 
lation to those of the New ? 

Conf. of Faith, as above, § 5. Rom. Cat., pt. ii, que, 9. Dick, Lect. 87. 
Turrettin, que, 9, Calvin Institutes, B. iv, ch. 14, § 23-end. 

Doctrine of Chuech and Sacraments Dependent. — The doctrine 
of the sacraments is closely dependent on that of the Church ; and is 
treated by many authorities, as strictly consequent thereon, as by Tur- 
rettin. It may also be remarked, that the doctrine of the Church is 
a head of the theology of redemption ; and may be treated as such, as 
well as a source for practical rules of church-order. But as that doc- 
trine is ably treated in another department of this Seminary, I shall 
assume its main principles, and use them as foundations for the discus- 
sion of the sacraments, without intruding into that circle of inquiry. 

Definition of Church and its Attributes. — Let us remember 
then, that the true Church of Christ is invisible, and consists of the 
whole body of the effectually called : That the same name is given, by 
accommodation, in the Scriptures, to a visible body, consisting of all 
those throughout the world, who make a credible profession of the 
true religion, together with their children : That the essential proper- 
ties of unity, holiness, indefectibility, catholicity, belong to the invisi- 
ble and not the visible Church : That God has defined the visible 
Church catholic, by giving it, in all its parts, a ministry, the Word, 
the sacraments and other ordinances, and some measure of His sancti- 
fying Spirit: That this visible Church is traced back at least to the 
family of Abraham, where it was organized by God's own authority on 
a gospel and ecclesiastical covenant : That this visible Church is sub- 
stantially the same under both dispensations, retaining under the New, 
the same membership and nature, though with a suitable change of 
circumstances, which it had under the Old Dispensation ; and that out 
of this visible Church catholic there is no ordinary possibility of salva- 
tion. In this visible Church, the sacraments are both badges of mem- 



OF LECTURES IK THEOLOGY. 197 

bership, and sealing ordinances. They also represent, apply, and seal, 
the chief truths of redemption. Hence, the importance of their dis- 
cussion. They will be found to bear a close relation to our whole sys- 
tem, both of doctrine and church-order. 

I. Bible ideas of Sacrament simple. — When one examines the 
Scriptures, and sees the brief and simple statements there given con- 
cerning the sacraments, he will be very apt to feel that the place as- 
signed them in many Protestant and all Romish systems of divinity, 
is inordinately large. This is an evidence of the strong tendency of 
mankind to formalism. In our treatment of the subject, much of the 
length assigned it will arise from our attempts to rebut these formal 
and superstitious tendencies, and reduce the sacraments to their Scrip- 
tural simplicity. 

Constituted of four things. — According to the definitition of the 
Confession of Faith, ch. 27, § 1, 2, there are four things which concur 
to constitute a sacrament, a.) A sensible, material element, b.) A 
covenanted grace of graces, aptly symbolized and represented to the 
senses by the element, c.) A mutual pledge and seal of this covenant 
between God and the soul, d.) And an express divine institution. 
The usual patristic definition was, " a sacrament is a sensible sign 
of an invisible grace." But this is too indefinite, and leaves out the 
federal feature. All ceremonies are not sacraments because they are 
of divine appointment; for they may not have this material element 
as symbol of a spiritual grace ; nor are all symbols of divine appoint- 
ment therefore sacrament ; because they may not be seals of a covenant. 
God's appointment most essential. — One of the most important 
features is the express divine appointment. Sacraments are acts of 
worship. All worship not instituted by God is will-worship, and there- 
fore offensive, because He is infinite and inscrutable to finite minds, as 
well as our absolute sovereign ; so that it is presumption in man to de- 
vise ways to please Him any farther than the appointment of His word 
bears us out, and because the devices of depraved and short-sighted 
man are always liable to be depraved and depraving. These reasons of 
course apply in full force to sacraments of human device. But there 
is an additional one. A sacrament is God's pledge of some covenanted 
grace to the true participant. Now, by the same i-eason that nobody 
can put my sign and seal to my bond save myself, no other than God 
can institute a sacrament. It is the most aggravated form of will- 
worship. 

Etymology and meaning. — The remarks of Dick and Hill concern- 
ing the etymology and usage of the word, sacramentum, have been suf- 
ficient ; (as meaning first, a suitor's money placed in pledge; second, a 
soldier's oath of enlistment ; third, some holy secret, the usual vulgate 
translation of musterion.) It has been plausibly suggested, that the 
latter is the sense primarily attached to it by the Latin Fathers, when 
they used it in our technical sense; as musterion is the word usually 
employed therefor by the Greeks. This is reasonable : yet the other 
idea of oath of enlistment to Christ was, we know, early attached to it. 
For in the earliest literature of the martyrs, e. g., Tertullian, and 
thenceforward generally, we find the ideas enlarged on, that the Chris- 
tian is a soldier enlisted and sworn, in the Lord's Supper^ to die for 
Jesus. 



198 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

II. Sacraments are seals, as well as signs. — Much of the re- 
mainder of this Lecture will consist of an attempt to substantiate the 
parts of our definition of a sacrament. The Socinians (and as Luther- 
ans and Papists charged, the Zwinglians), being outraged by the un- 
scriptural and absurd doctrine of Rome, concerning the intrinsic effi- 
cacy of sacraments, ex opere operato, adopted this view that a sacra- 
ment is but an instructive and commemorative symbol of certain facts and 
truths and badges of profession. This we hold to be true so far as it 
goes, but to be insufficient. They are also pledges and seals on God's 
part of covenanted gospel blessings, as well as pledges of service and 
fidelity on our part, (which is implied in their being badges of profes- 
sion.) And here we oppose the Papists also, because they also repu- 
diate the sphragistic nature of the sacraments, in making them actually 
confer and work, instead of signing and sealing the appropriate graces. 

a.) Because circumcision was a seal. — The arguments for our view 
are the following : It is expressly said, Rom. iv : 11, that circumcision, 
one of the sacraments of the Old Testament, was to Abraham a sign 
and " seal of the righteousness of faith, which he had while yet uncir- 
cumcised." It must have been equally a seal to all other genuine be- 
lievers of Israel ; for the ground of its application to them was no other 
than their coming under the very covenant then instituted with Abra- 
ham, and inheriting the same promises. But Baptism is the circum- 
cision of the New Testament, the initial sign of the same covenant ; 
and baptized believers are children of Abraham's promises by faith. 
Matt, xxviii : 29 ; Acts ii : 38, 39 ; Rom. iv : 11, 16, &c. It seems very 
obvious therefore, that Baptism is as much a seal as circumcision was. 
So the passover, at its first institution, was a pledge (as well as sign) of 
a covenanted immunity. See Exod. xii : 13, 23. When we establish a 
similar identity between the Passover and the Supper, the same argu- 
ment will appear, that the latter also is a seal. 

b.) The Sacraments confer outward privilege. — But second. 
The pledge contained in the sacraments is plainly indicated in the out- 
ward or ecclesiastical privileges, into which they immediately induct 
the partaker. He who received the sign, was thereby at once entitled 
to the enjoyment of certain privileges the signs and means of saving 
graces. How can the idea of pledging be avoided here ? And the 
sacramental union expressed in the Bible language implies the same. 
In Gen. xvii; 10, 13, circumcision is called the covenant. In Jno. iii : 
5; Tit. iii : 5, baptism is called regeneration; and in Acts xxii : 16, 
remission of sins. In Exod xii, et passim, the lamb is called the pass- 
over. In 1 Cor. xi : 24, 25, the bread and wine are called the body 
and blood. Now, this intimate union, implied in such language, must 
be either opus operatum, (which we shall disprove,) or a sealing pledge. 
Eor illustration, by what usage of human language could that symboli- 
cal act in a feudal investiture, handing to the tenant a green sod cut 
from the manor conveyed, be called "Livery of seizin;" unless it was 
understood to represent the conveying and guaranteeing of possession 
in the land 1 

A federal sign is necessarily a seal. — And third. When we re- 
member that a sacrament symbolizes, not any kind of fact or truth, 
but one peculiar sort, viz : a covenant, we see that in making a sacra- 
ment a symbol and badge, we make it a seal and pledge. For the 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 199 

latter idea is necessarily involved in a federal symbol, which is just the 
idea of the sacrament. When I shake hands as an indication only of 
general good will, the act may be merely symbolical ; but when I give 
my hand on a bargain, the symbol inevitably conveys a sealing meaning. 
III. Matter of the Sacrament what? Natural foundation 
for it. — Both the Popish and Protestant Scholastics have defined the 
sacraments as consisting in matter, and form. This proceeds upon the 
Aristoteli dialectus. But here the student must note that by form is 
not meant the shape of a material thing, or the fomulary, or mode of 
observance outward; but (the idea of a sacrament being complex) that 
trait which, when superinduced on the transaction, distinguishes it as 
a sacrament. Both agree that the matter of the sacrament consists of 
a sensible symbol, and of a federal truth of religion symbolized. The 
trait of human nature to which the institution of sacraments is ac- 
commodated is evidently this : that man being a sensuous being, sug- 
gestions prompted by a sensible object are much more vivid and perma- 
nent than those prompted by mental conceptions merely, whether the 
associated suggestion be of thought, or of emotion. Society offers 
many illustrations of this mental law, and of useful social formalities 
founded on it. What else is the meaning and use of friends shaking 
hands? Of civic ceremonials? Of the symbolical acts in forming 
matrimonial vows ? Of commemorative monuments, painting and 
statues? On this principle rest also the attractiveness of pilgrimages, 
the ties of all local associations, and the sacredness attached to the 
graves of the dust of those we love. 

Hence, a Sacrament has, first, a significant material part. — ■ 
Hence, it is obvious that there will be in every sacrament, some mate- 
rial element, palpable to the senses, and especially to our eye-sight. 
This element should also be not merely an arbitrary, but a natural 
sign of the grace signified ; that is, it should have some natural analogy 
to suggest the related grace. By arbitrary agreement, soldiers have 
bargained that a certain blast of the trumpet shall signify advance : 
and algebraists, that a certain mark (-(-) shall represent addition. 
There is no previous analogy. But in circumcision, the removal of the 
preputium aptly and naturally represents putting away carnality ; and 
results in a hidden, yet indelible mark, graphically signifying the 
inward renewal of the heart. In baptism, water, which is the deter- 
gent element in nature, as aptly signifies cleansing of guilt and Carnal- 
ity. In the passover, the sprinkled blood represented the atonement: 
and the eating of the sacrificed body of the lamb, faith's receptive act, 
in embracing Jesus Christ for the life of the soul. In the Lord's 
supper, the same symbols almost, are retained ; i. e., eating something 
that nourishes; but not in this case animil food, because the typical 
nature t of the passover, contained in the life which maketh atonement 
for oq . sin," had already terminated on Christ the antitype. But it 
mus£ V1 e added, that a mere natural analogy does not constitute a sa- 
crament. The analogy must be selected, and consecrated by the ex- 
press institution of Grod. 

The Form what ? — The Protestant scholastics very properly (if the 
extremely artificial analysis of the Peripatetics is to be retained at 
all) declared that the form which constitutes the element and theolog- 



200 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

ical truth a sacrament, is the instituted signification. The Papists 
make the form of sacrament to consist in the words of institution-. 
Those words are indeed, in each case, expressive of the appointed sig- 
nification ; whence it may be supposed, that the difference of definition 
is unimportant. But we shall see that the Papists are thereby smooth- 
ing the way for their idea of the sacramental union, involving an effi- 
ciency by opus operatum and the power of the canonical priest to 
constitute the ceremonial a sacrament or not, at his will. 

IV. Sacramental union, what 1 — Our Confession declares, c. 27, 
§ 2, that "there is, in every sacrament, a spiritual relation, or sacra- 
mental union, between the sign and the thing signified ; whence it 
comes to pass that the names and effects of the one are attributed to 
the other." Instances of this sacramental language have been already 
given, (p. 302.) Others may be found, where the grace is named by 
the sign, in Matt, xxvi : 27, 28 ; 1 Pet. iii : 21 ; Rom. vi : 4 ; Col. ii : 
11, 12, &c. This sacramental union is defined by the Confession as "a 
spiritual relation," and by Turrettin, as a "relative and moral union." 
The latter repudiates the proposition, that it is a "spiritual" union ; 
but ne repudiates it in the sense in which it is asserted by Papists, 
who mean by it a literal connexion of the spiritual benefit with the 
material element, such that it is conferred wherever the element is ex 
opere operato. Turrettin's "moral relation*' means the same with our 
Confession's "spiritual relation." Both, of course, imply that this re- 
lation only is real in those cases in which the recipient partakes with 
proper state of heart. In such cases (only,) the elements are the means 
and channels of gracious benefits, not in virtue of a physical union of 
the grace to the elements, but of their adaptation and Grod's appoint* 
ment and purpose, and the Holy Ghost's influence. 

The Union not physical. — Should any one assert a different union 
from that of the Confession, he would be refuted by common sense, 
which pronounces the absurdity of the whole notion of the conveyance 
of spiritual benefits by a physical power through a physical union. 
It is nothing better than an instance of a religious jugglery. He is 
opposed by the Old Testament, which declares its sacraments to be 
only signs and seals of grace embraced through faith. He is contra- 
dicted by the general tenour of the New Testament, which always 
conditiops our participation of saving blessings on our state of heart. 
And he is inconsistent with himself; for if the tie connecting the grace 
with the element were a physical tie, the grace ought to go wherever 
the element goes. It is so with the tie between substance and attri- 
butes, in every other case. If it is the nature of fire to burn, then 
fire surely burns him whom it touches, whether it be conveyed to him 
by friend or foe, by design or chance, in anger or in friendship. 
Then, the intention of the priest, and the tftate of mortal sin ii^the 
recipient ought to make no difference whatever as to the gracious^m- 
cacy. In placing these limitations, the Papist has really given up' his 
position ; he has virtually admitted that the sacramental union is only 
a relation of instituted moral influence. But if it is such, thpn its 
efficacy must be tested just like other moral influence exerted by the 
Holy Ghost. Are any of them exerted, can they be exerted, any 
otherwise than through the intelligent embracing and acting upon the 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 201 

truth by the soul of the subject? The same topick -will be more fully 
discussed when we consider the claim of opus operation. 

V. But two New Testament Sacraments. Rome has seven. — 
All Protestants are agreed that among the religious rites instituted by 
God for the New Testament Churches, there are but two, which meet 
the definition of a sacrament : baptism and the Lord's supper. As they 
obviously present all the requisites, and as there is no dispute concern- 
ing their claim, we shall not argue it, but proceed to consider the pre- 
tensions of the five other so-called sacraments of the Romish Church : 
confirmation, penance, orders, matrimony, and extreme unction. To 
prove that the sacraments are seven, the Roman Catechism seems to 
rely chiefly on this argument : As there are seven things in physical 
life which are essential to the propagation and well-being of man and 
of society, that men be born, grow, be nourished, be healed when sick, 
be strengthened when weak, have rulers to govern them, and rear chil- 
dren lawfully ; so in the analagous life of the Spirit, there are seven 
essential wants, to each of which a sacrament answers. In baptism the 
soul is born unto Christ, by confirmation we grow, in the eucharist we 
are fed with heavenly nourishment, in penance the soul is medicined for 
the returns of the disease of sin, in extreme unction it is strengthened 
for its contest with the last enemy, in orders the spiritual magistracy 
is instituted, and in matrimony the production of legitimate offspring 
is secured. The answer to all this trifliug is obvious, that by the same 
argument it would bo as easy to make a dozen sacraments as seven : 
one to answer to man's home and shelter, one to his raiment to cover 
him, one to his fire to warm him, &c.,&c.,for these also are necessaries. 
But to proceed to details. 

C )nfirmation No Sacrament. — Confirmation is not a sacrament of 
the New Testament, because it utterly lacks the divine institution. The 
imposition of hands practiced in Acts viii : 17, and xix : 6, and men- 
tioned in Heb. vi : 2, was a rite intended to confer the miraculous cha- 
risms of the Holy Ghost, and therefore peculiar to the apostolic age, 
and purely temporary. The evidences of this fact are presented in the 
exposition of Acts. Let Rome or Canterbury so confer the Holy Ghost, 
by their imposition of hands, that they shall make men prophesy and 
speak with tongues (Acts xix: 6), and we will believe. Again: It is 
the sheerest blunder to pretend to find this rite of confirmation in any 
of those passages where apostles are said to "confirm " (Acts xiv: 22, 
Steridzein) the churches, or the souls of the brethren: The context, 
dispassionately viewed, will show that this was merely the instructions 
and encouragements addressed to them by the apostles' prayers and 
preachings. For these reasons, and because the Scriptures direct us 
to expect in baptism and the Lord's supper all the increments of grace 
which Christians receive through any sacramental channel, we do not 
hold modern confirmation to be a scriptural rite at all. But if it were, 
it could not be a sacrament, for two fatal reasons : that it has no ma- 
terial element (for the oil or chrism is of purely human addition, with- 
out one syllable of scriptural authority) ; and it has no promise of grace 
attached to it by any divine institution. It seals no pledge God has 
given. 

Penance No Sacrament.. — 2. Papists profess to find the matter of 



202 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the sacrament of penance iu the penitent's three exercises, of contri- 
tion, confession, and satisfaction ; and its form in the priest's absolution. 
Now, in the case of sins which scandalize the Church openly, a confes- 
sion to man is required by the New Testament, and a profession of con- 
trition. And when such profession is credible, it is proper for the min- 
ister to pronounce the acquittal of the offending brother from Church 
censure. And this is the only case in which anything like confession 
and absolution is enjoined as an ecclesiastical rite in the New Testa- 
ment. The only plausible case cited by Rome, that of Jas. v: 16, is 
non-ecclesiastical, because it is mutual confession, and its object is mu- 
tual prayers for each other's forgiveness. That would be a queer sacra- 
ment in which recipient should turn the tables on administrator, giv- 
ing him the elements and conferring the grace ! Having limited scrip- 
tural confession and absolution to the single case denned above, we 
find overwhelming reasons why, in that case, they cannot compose a 
sacrament. There is no element to symbolize the grace promised ; for 
by what title can a set of feelings and acts in the penitent be called a 
material element? If this be waved, there is no analogy between this 
pretended element, and a symbolized grace ; for contrition and confes- 
sion do not represent, they are themselves graces, if genuine. There 
is no divine warrant, in words of institution, authorizing the minister to 
announce a divine grace ; for all he is authorized to announce is acquit- 
tal from Church discipline. "Who can forgive sins but God only?" 
And last : It is the nature of a sacrament to be pertaken by all alike 
who are within the covenant. But scriptural penance is appropriate 
only to the exceptional cases of those communicants who have scandal- 
ized their profession. The additions which the Papists have made, of 
auricular confession and satisfaction, greatly aggravate the objections. 

Extreme Unction No Sacrament. — 3. The formulary for extreme 
unction may be found described in Turrettin and others. The only 
places of Scripture cited in its support are Mark vi : 13, and Jas. v : 14. 
These cases so obviously fail to bear out the Popish sacrament that 
many of their own writers confess it. The objects were different : the' 
apostles anointed to heal the bodies ; the priests do it to prepare them 
for dying. The apostles anointed all sick persons who called on them, 
baptized, unbaptized, those in mortal sin ; sacraments are properly only 
for Church members. The effect in the apostles' case was miraculous : 
can Rome claim this? And there can be no sacrament, because the 
priest has no divine institution and promise on which to proceed. 

Orders No Sacrament. — 4. Orders cannot be a sacrament, although 
when stripped of its superstitious additions, a New Testament rite. 
For it has no element. The imposition of hands with prayer (chrism, 
&c, is all extra-scriptural) is but an action, not an element. It has no 
saving grace connected with it, by any promise or word of institution. 
As has been shown by my colleague, in his course, ordination confers 
no grace, but only recognizes its possession. According to Borne, the 
action which she preposterously elevates into a matter, is not uniform ; 
but as there are seven orders of clergy, there are several different cere- 
monials enjoined in the different cases. And last: only one Christian 
out of a number is ordained to any office; whereas a sacrament is for 
all equally, who are in the covenant. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 



203 



5. For the sacramental character of matrimony, the only showing' of 
scriptural defence is the vulgate translation of Eph. 5 : 32 : "Hoc est 
sacr amentum magnum." Surely a mistranslation of a bad version is a 
bad foundation on which to build a Bible claim ! And then, as has 
been well remarked, the great mysterion, on which Paul remarks, is not 
the marriage relation at all, but the mystical union of Christ to His 
people. In matrimony there is no sacramental element at all, no divine 
warrant for sacramental institution, no grace of redemption signed and 
sealed to the recipients. And to crown the absurdity, the rite is not 
limited to God's people, but is equally valid among Pagans! Indeed, 
marriage is a civil contract, and not an ecclesiastical one. Yet Rome 
has found it to her interest to lay her hand on the rite,, and thus to ele- 
vate the question of divorce into an ecclesiastical one, and a causa ma- 
jor. 

VL Sacraments of Old Testament Two. Sacrifices not Sacra- 
ments, and Why.— As to the number of sacraments under the ©Id 
Testament dispensation Calvinistic divines are not agreed. Some seem 
inclined to regard any or every symbolical rite there found as a sacra- 
ment. Others, far more correctly, as I conceive, limit them to two ; 
circumcision and the passover. The claim of these two to be sacra- 
ments need hardly be much argued, inasmuch as it is not disputed. 
They are symbols instituted by God ; they have each their elements, 
bearing a significant relation to the grace represented: the thing repre- 
sented was in each case federal, so that they not only signified, but 
sealed or pledged the benefits of a covenant. 

But the various typical sacrifices of the Hebrews cannot be properly 
regarded as sacraments, for the very reason that they were mere types, 
(The passover also was a type, in that it was a sacrifice proper, but it 
was also more than a type, a commemorative and sealing ordinance.) 
For a type points forward to an antitype to come. A sacrament points 
back to a covenant already concluded. The type does not actually con- 
fer the good symbolized, but holds the soul in suspense, waiting for it. 
The sacrament seals a, present possession to the worthy receiver. This 
was as true of the two Old Testament sacraments as of the New. See 
Rom. iv; 11 ; Exod. xii ; 13. To the obedient and observant Hebrew, 
the passover was, on the night of its institution, the sign and seal of 
the remission of death, bodily and spiritual death, the proper penalty 
of sin, visited that night on a part of the Egyptians ; and doubtless, in 
all subsequent ages, the truly believing Hebrew found it the consoling 
pledge of a present and actual (not typical) remission and spiritual 
life, through the merit of the " Lamb of God.' 5 Again, a sacrament 
is a holy ordinance, to be observed alike by all who are within the cov- 
enant. But many of the sacrifices were adapted only to exceptional 
cases ; as the Nazarites, the trespass offering, the sacrifice for the purifi- 
cation of women, &c. 

Sacraments of both Testaments Same in Signification. — The 
question whether the sacraments of the Old and New Testaments are the 
same substantially in their signification and efficacy will be found in the 
sequel one of prime importance. The grounds on which we assert their 
substantial identity are these : 

a.) Presumptively : The covenant of grace is the same under the 



204 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

two Testaments, offering the same blessing, redemption; through the 
same agencies; justification and sanctification through the work of 
Christ and the Holy Ghost. Hence, it is natural to suppose that sacra- 
ments, especially when sealing the same covenant graces, should operate 
in substantially the same way. b.) The identity of the covenant, and 
of the means of sealing it, is strongly implied by Paul, 1 Cor. x : 1-4, 
when he says that there was a sense in which the Hebrew Church pos- 
sessed baptism and the Lord's supper. Turrettin verv strangely argues 
from this, and deals with objections as though he understood the Apos- 
tle to teach that the Hebrews of the Exodus had literally and formerly 
a real sacrament of baptism, and the supper, in the passage of the Red 
Sea, and the eating and drinking of the Manna and water of Massah. 
This seems tome to obscure the argument ; and it would certainly have 
this effect : that we must teach that Israel bad four sacraments instead 
of two. The scope of the Apostle is, to show that participation in 
sealing ordinances and ecclesiastical privileges does not ensure salva- 
tion. For Israel all shared these wondrous sealings to God, yet many 
of them perished. And to strengthen the analogy he compares them 
to the New Testament sacraments. Now, if Israel's consecration to 
God in this Exodus was virtually a baptizing and a Eucharist, we infer 
that the spirit of the Israelitish ordinances was not essentially different 
from that of the New Testament, c.) The supper is called by the 
name of the passover. 1 Cor. v: 7, 8. And the baptism is declared 
to be, Col. ii : 11, 12, the New Testament circumcision, d.) The sup- 
per came in the room of the passover, as is manifest from the circum- 
stances of its institution, and the baptism came in the room of circum- 
cision ; compare Gen. xvii; 11, with Matt, xxviii : 19. See Acts ii : 
38, 39. And, last, circumcision and baptism signify and seal the same 
graces. This will be manifest from a comparison of Gen. xvii : 13, 14, 
with Acts ii : 41; Deut. x: 16, or xxx : 6, with Jno. iii : 5, or with 
Titus iii: 5, and Eph. v: 26; Acts vii : 8, with Rom. vi : 3, 4 ; Rom. 
iv: 11, with Acts ii : 38, and xxii : 16. We here learn that each sa- 
crament signified entrance into the visible Church, remission of sin, 
regeneration, and the engagement to be the Lord's. So the passover 
and the supper signify substantially the same. In our passover, the 
Lamb of God is slain, the blood is sprinkled, our souls feed on Him by 
faith, and the consequence is that God's wrath passeth over us, and our 
souls live. , 



LECTUKE LX. 



SYLLABUS. 
THE SACRAMENTS. (Continued.) 

7, Is the efficncy of the Sacraments dependent on the officiator's intention ? 
TurreHn, Loc. xix.que. 7. Dick, Lect.86, 87. Conf. of Faith, cb. xxvii. 
Eidgeley, que. 161. Council of Trent, Sess. vii, Canon 11, 



OF LECTURES'IK THEOLOGY. 205 

8. Is that efficiency produced ex opere operato ; or does it depend on the re- 
cipient's exercise of the proper frames, inwrought by the Holy Ghost through 
the Word of God ? 

Turrettin, que. 8. Calv. Inst. Bk. iv, ch. 44. Dick, Lect. 86. Ridgeley, 
que. 161. Rom, Catechism, pt. ii, que. 18. Council of Trent, Sess. vii, 
Canon, 4 to 8 inclusive. 

9. Is participation in the Sacraments necessary to salvation ? 

Turrettin, ques. 2 and 13. Council of Trent, as above. 

10. Bv whom should the Sacraments be administered ? 

Turrettin, que. 14. Rice and Campbell, Debate, Prop. iv. Calv. Inst.Bk. 
iv, ch. 15. § 20-end. 

11. Do the rites of Baptism, Confirmation, and orders confer an indelible spi- 
ritual character ? 

Turrettin, que. 10. Dick, as above. Dr. Geo, Campbell, Lect. xi, on 
Eccles. Hist. (p. 183, &c.) Rom. Catechism, pt. ii, que. 19. Council of 
Trent, Sess. vii, Can. 9. 

VII. Rome's Doctrine of Intention. — -The Council of Trent 
asserts, (Sess. 7 canon 11), that the intention of doing at least what 
the Church proposes to do, is uecessax-y in the administrator, to make 
the sacraments valid. Some popish divines are so accommodating as to 
teach that if this intention is habitual or virtual, though not present, 
because of inattention, in the mind of the administrator, at the moment 
of pronouncing the words of institution, it is still valid ; and some even 
say, that though the officiating person have heretical notions of the effi- 
cacy of the Sacramant, e. g., the Presbyterian notion, and honestly in- 
tend a Sacrament, as he understands it, it is valid. Now there is obvi- 
ously a sense, in which the validity of sacramental acts, depends on the 
intention of the parties. If for instance, a frivolous or profane clergy- 
man should, in a moment of levity, use the proper elements, and pro- 
nounce the proper words of institution, for purposes of mockery or sin- 
ful sport, it would certainly not be a sacrament. But this is a lack of 
intention, of a far different kind from the popish. There would be 
neither the proper place, time, nor circumstances of a divine rite. The 
profanity of purpose would be manifest and overt ; and all parties would 
be guilty of it. The participation, on both sides, would be a high act 
of profanity. But where the proper places, times and attendant cir- 
cumstances exist so far as the honest worshipper can judge ; and all the 
divine institution essential to the validity of the rite is regularly per- 
formed with an appearance of religious sincerity and solemnity, there 
we deny that the sincere participant can be deprivedof the sacramental 
benefit, by the clergyman's secret lack of intention. And this : because 

Refutation. — -a) It is the opinion of all the Protestant divines, even 
including Calvin, (Inst. Bk. iv, ch. 14), that the gracious efficacy of the 
sacraments is generically like that of the Word. The sacraments are 
but an acted word, and & promise in symbol. They effect their gracious 
result through the Holy Ghost cultivating intelligent faith, &c. Now, 
the efficacy of the word is not dependent on the motives of him who 
conveys it. God sometimes saves a soul by a message delivered through 
a wicked man. Why may not it be thus with a sacrament? 

b.) If the clergyman lack the right intention, that is simply his per- 
sonal sin. It is preposterous to represent God as suspending the fate 
of a soul, or its edification, absolutely upon the good conduct of another 
fellow-sinner, whose secret fault that soul can neither prevent, nor even 
detect till too late. This is not Scripture. Prov, ix : 12 ; Rom. xiv : 4. 



£06 SYLLABUS AND tfOTJES 

This objection to Rome's doctrine is peculiarly forcible against hev,be» 
cause she represents the valid enjoyment of sacraments, as essential to 
salvation : and because she herself teaches that the validity of the sac- 
raments is not dependent on the personal character of the clergyman, 
not even though he be in mortal sin. Why should this one sin, which 
is precisely a personal sin of the officiator, no more, no less, be an ex- 
ception 1 

c.) The possible consequences of the doctrine, as pointed out by Tur- 
rettin, Dick, &c, are such as amount to a reductio ad dbsurdum. If it 
it were true, it would bring in question the validity of any sacrament, 
of every priest's baptism and ordination, of the validity of the Apos- 
tolic Succession at every link, and of every mass ; so that the worship- 
per would never know, while worshipping the wafer, whether he were 
guilty of idolatry or not, even on Popish principles. 

Motive For the dogma. — Last. This doctrine is totally devoid of 
Bible support. But these tremendous difficulties have not prevented 
Borne from asserting the doctrine. Her purpose is to hold the laity 
in the most absolute and terrible dependence on the priesthood. She 
tells them that without valid sacraments it is impossible to be saved ; 
and that even where they have the canonical form of a sacrament, they 
may utterly fail of getting the sacrament itself, through the priest's 
secret will; and may never find it out till they wake in hell, and find 
themselves damned for the want of it. What power could be more 
portentous? 

VIII. Doctrine of efficacy ex opere operato.— In the scholastic 
jargon of Borne, means of grace naturally divide themselves into two 
classes — those which do good ex opere operato^ and those which only do 
good ex opere operantis. The former do good by the simple perform- 
ance of the proper ceremonial, without any act or movement of soul 
in the recipients, accommodating themselves intelligently to the grace 
signified. The latter only do good when the recipient exercises the 
appropriate acts of soul ; and the good done is dependent on those ex- 
ercises, as well as on the outward means. Of the latter kind of means 
is preaching, &c; but Borne holds that the sacraments all belong to 
the former. Her meaning, then, is that the mere administration of 
the sacrament does the appointed good to the recipient, provided he is 
not in a state of mortal sin, whether he exercises suitable frames or not s 
So Council of Trent, Sess. 7, Canon, 6-8. But Bomish Theologians 
are far from being of one mind, as to the nature of this immediate and 
absolute efficacy. 

Phases of it.— Their views may be grouped with tolerable accuracy 
under two classes. One class, embracing the Jesuit and more Popish 
Papists, regard the opus operation efficacy as a proper and literal effect 
of the sacramental element and words of institution, by their own im- 
mediate causation. They do not, and cannot explain the nature of this 
causation, unless it be literally physical ; and then it is absurd. The 
other class, includiug Jansenists, and the more spiritual, regard the 
sacramental efficacy as spiritual — i.e., as the almighty redeeming influ- 
ence of Christ and the Holy Ghost, purchased for sinners by Christ ; 
which spiritual influence they suppose God has been pleased in His 
mercy to tie by a constant purpose, and gracious promise, to the sacra- 



OF LECTURES IX THEOLOGY. 207 

ments of the Church canonically administered, by a tie gracious arid 
positive, yet absolute and unconditioned, so that the sacramental effi- 
cacy goes to every human being to whom the elements go with the pro- 
per word of institution, whether the recipient exercise faith or not. 
That is, God has been pleased, in His sovereign mercy to the Church, 
to make her sacraments the essential and the unfailing channels of His 
spiritual grace. The opinion of the Prelate Fathers seems to have 
been intermediate — that no one got saving grace except through the 
sacramental channel, (excepting the doubtful case of the uncnvenanted 
mercies,) but that in order to get grace through that channel, faith and 
repentance were also necessary. (See Augustine, in Calvin's ubi sapra.) 
And such is probably the real opinion of high Church Episcopalians, 
and of Campbellites, as to the grace of remission. 

Protestant view. — Now Prott slants believe that the sacraments, 
under proper circumstances, are not a hollow shell, devoid of gracious 
efficacy. Nor is their use of that of a mere badge. But they are not 
the channels or vehicles for acquiring the saving graces first ; inasmuch 
as the possession of those graces is a necessary prerequisite to proper 
participation in adults. The efficacy of the sacrament therefore is in 
no case more than to strengthen and nourish saving graces. And that 
efficacy they carry only as moral means of spiritual influences ; so that 
the whole benefit depends on an intelligent, believing and penitent re- 
ception. And every believer has the graces of redemption in such de- 
gree as to save his soul, if a true believer, whether he has any sacra- 
ments or not. See Confession of Faith, eh. xxvii : § 3. In this sense 
we deny the opus operat. 

Proved. By analogous operation of Word. — a) Because that 
doctrine is contradicted by the analogy of the mode in which the Word 
operates. As we have stated, Protestant divines admit no generic dif- 
ference between the mode in which the Holy Ghost works in the Word, 
and in the Sacraments. The form of the sacraments is the instituted 
significance of it. But that significance is only learned in the Scrip- 
tures, and the word of institution is to be found, as well as its expla- 
nation, in the same place. The sacrament, without the intelligent sig- 
nification, is dumb : it is naught. Scripture alone gives it its signifi- 
cance. Sacraments are but the word symbolized ; the covenant before 
expressed in promissory language, now expressed in sphragistic symbols. 
But now, what is more clear, than that the word depends for its efficacy, 
on the believing and active reception of the sinner's soul? See 2 Cor. 
iii : 6 ; Heb. iv : 2, et passim. The same thing is true of the sacraments. 

By Sphragistic character. — b.) The sacraments are defined in 
Scriptures as signs and seals, Rom. iv : 11 ■ Gen. xvii : 10. Now to 
signify and to promise a thing is different from doing it. Where the 
effect is present, the sign and pledge thereof is superseded. When the 
money is paid, the bond that engaged for its payment is done with. 
To make the sacrament effect redemption ex opere operato, therefore 
destroys their sacramental nature. But more: They are seals of a 
covenant. That Covenant, as far as man is a party (and in the sacra- 
meDt, the recipient is one party), was suspended on an instrumental 
condition, a penitent and obedient faith. How can the seal have a 
more immediate and absolute efficiency than the covenant of which it 
is a seal. That covenant c;ives it all its force. 



208 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

By grace presupposed. — c.) The sacraments cannot confer redeem- 
ing grace ex opere operato, because, in every adult, proper participation 
presupposes saving grace in exercise. See Bom. iv : 1 1, last clause ; 
Acts viii : 38, 36, 37 ; ix : 11 with 18 ; x ; 34 with 47 ; Mark xvi : 16 ; 
1 Peter iii : 21 ; Hob. xi : 6 ; 1 Cor. xi : 28, 29 ; v : 7, 8. Hence : 

By instances of Salvation without Sacraments. — d.) Several in 
Scripture were saved without any sacraments, as the thief on the cross. 
Cornelius, we have seen, and Abraham, were already in a state of re- 
demption, before their participation in the sacraments. Now, inas- 
much as we have proved that a true believer once in a state of grace 
can never fall totally away, we may say that Abraham and Cornelius 
were already redeemed. Jno. iii : 36 ; v : 24. And the overwhelming 
proof that the sacraments have no intrinsic efficacy, is in this glaring 
fact, that multitudes partake them, with what Borne calls canonical 
regularity, who never exhibit in their lives or deaths, one mark of 
Christian character. Nor will it avail for Borne to say, that they after- 
wards lost the grace by committing mortal sin: for the Scriptures say 
say that the redeemed soul cannot fall away into mortal sin : and mul- 
titudes exhibit their total depravity, not after a subsequent backsliding, 
but from the hour they leave the sacramental altar, by an unbroken life 
of sin. 

De Absurdis. — e.) The claim of uniform and absolute efficiency, in 
its grosser form, is absolute absurdity. How can physical, material 
elements, with a word of institution pronounced over them (which of 
itself can go no farther into the hearer, than the tympanum of his ear), 
effect a moral and spiritual change? It is vile jugglery: degrading to 
Christianity, and reducing the holy sacraments to a pagan incantation. 
But the Jesuit pleads, that we see ten thousand cases, where the exter- 
nal physical world produces mental and moral effects, through sensation. 
We reply that this is not true in the sense necessary to support their 
doctrine. Sensation is not the efficient, but only the occasional cause 
of moral feeling, volition, &c. The efficient cause is in the mind's own 
dispositions and free agency. 

But if the other view of the opus operatum be urged : that the effi- 
ciency is spiritual, and results, not from the direct causation of the rite 
itself, but from the power of Cod graciously and sovereignly connected 
therewith : we demaud the revealed warrant. Where is the promise to 
the Church from God, that this connexion shall be absolute? The 
Scriptures are silent, when properly interpreted. Indeed, in many 
places they explicitly declare the contrary. See Rom. ii : 25 to end ; 
Deut. x : 16; Jer. iv : 4 ; Luke xiii : 26, 27 ; 1 Cor. xi : 29. It may be 
urged that several of these passages apply to the Old Testament sac- 
raments. We have proved that they were substantially similar to the 
New. And the whole strain of Scripture, which declares that God's 
favour depends on the state of the heart, that He requireth truth in 
the inward parts, &c, renders the dogma incredible. 

Scriptures Reconciled. — f.) But Papists and Prelatists quote a 
class of passages, which do seem to give an immediate efficiency to the 
rite itself. See Jno. iii: 5; Acts ii : 38: xxii : 16; Eph. v; 26; 1 
Cor. x : 17; Rom.vi: 3; Luke xxii: 19, 20, &c. Protestants explain 
these passages in consistency with their views, by saying that they are 
all expressions based on the sacramental union, and to be explained in 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 209 

consistency with it; e. g., in Jno. iii : 5, the birth of the water means 
the birth by that which the water represents, the Holy G-host, &c. The 
propriety of this interpretation is defended, first, by the analogous 
case of the hypostatic union in Christ's person, where God is in one 
place spoken of as having blood, and the Prince of Life as dying. Pa- 
pists agree with us, that in virtue of the union of the two natures in 
one person, the person, even when denominated by the one nature, is 
represented as doing what, in strictness of speech, the other alone 
could do. So, in the sacraments, there are suggested two things — the 
rite, and the grace signified by the rite. How natural, then, that a 
Hebrew should attribute to the rite, by figure, what the answering 
grace really effects 1 In the second place, this probability is greatly 
strengthened by noticing the way, natural to Hebrew mind, of speaking 
concerning all other symbols, as types, &c. The symbol is almost uni- 
formly said to be the thing symbolized ; when the meaning is, that it 
represents it. Third : our interpretation of these passages is adopted 
by Scripture itself, in one of the very strongest instances, thus author- 
izing our view of the exegesis of the whole class. See 1 Pet. iii : 21. 
Here, first baptism is said to save us, as the ark saved Noah. What 
expression could be stronger? But yet the Apostle explains himself 
by saying, it is not the putting away of the filth of the flesh which ef- 
fects it, but the answer (eperotema) of a good conscience towards 
God. These words ascribe the efficacy of the sacrament to the honesty 
of the participant's confession; and this whether with Turrettin and 
Winer we translate " request to God," or with Neander and Robinson, 
"Sponsio." Fourth. If men will persist in making the above Scrip- 
tures teach the opus operation, the only result will be that the Scrip- 
tures will be made to contradict itself; for it is impossible to explain 
away all the proof-texts we have arrayed. 

This difference between us and Rome is fundamental; because she 
teaches men to depend essentially on the wrong trust for salvation. 
The result must be union of souls. 

IX. Sacraments, in what sense necessary. — The question of the 
necessity of the sacraments in order to salvation, is nearly connected 
with the previous one. This is indicated by the fact that the same 
persons usually hold their essential necessity, and their efficacy ex opere 
operato. And this consistently ; for the sacraments have that marvel- 
lous virtue, it can hardly be supposed that man can safely lack them. 

Now, there is a sense in which the neglect of the sacraments would 
destroy the soul. To observe them is God's command. He who will- 
ingly disobeys this command, and perseveres, will thereby destroy his 
soul, just for the same reason that any wilful disobedience will. But 
then, it is not the lack of the sacraments, but the impenitent state of 
the soul, which is the true cause of ruin. Turrettin: "Eorunnon pri- 
vaiio, sed contemptus damnat." The command to observe them is not 
of perpetual, and original, but only of positive institution ; and owes 
its force over our consciences to the mere precept of God. Hence they 
should be regarded from the same general point of view with other 
positive rights. We sustain this : 

Arguments, a). By reference to the free and spiritual character of 
the gospel plan as indicated throughout Scripture. God has not tied 



210 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

His grace to forms, places, or sacerdotal orders. All men alike have 
access to his redeeming mercy, provided their hearts desire it, and un- 
der all outward circumstances. Jno. iv : 21, 23 ; Lukexviii : 14, &c. 

b.) We infer the same thing from the numerous and exceedingly ex- 
plicit passages which promise the immediate bestowal of redeeming 
grace, and mention no other term than believing. Some of them do it 
in terms which hardly admit of evasion. E. g., Jno. v : 24; 6: 29. 
Does not this seem to say that believing alone puts the soul in posses- 
sion of redemption ? True, the Papist may say that one passage of 
Scripture should be completed by another ; and that in other places 
(e. g., Jno. iii: 5; Mark xvi : 16) the observance of the sacrament is 
coupled with the believing grace, as a term of salvation. But when 
those passages are well understood, it is seen that the importance of 
the outward sacrament depends wholly on the sacramental union. We 
repeat, that the places in which faith alone is mentioned as the instru- 
mental condition, are so numerous, so explicit, and some of them pro- 
fessed answers to questions so distinct as (Acts xvi: 31) that it is simply 
incredible the Holy Ghost would have so omitted the mention of the 
sacraments if they were essential. 

c). But their nature shows they are not. They are sensible signs of 
an inward grace. The reception of them therefore implies the posses- 
sion of grace ; a sufficient proof it does not originate it. 

d.) This leads us to add, that many have actually been saved with- 
out any sacraments. Abraham and Cornelius were both in a state of 
grace before they partook of any sacrament. The penitent thief went 
to paradise without ever partaking. Circumcision could not be admin- 
istered till the eighth day of the Hebrew infant's life ; and doubtless 
many died uncircumcised in the first week of their life. Were these 
all lost? This Popish doctrine gives a frightful view of the condition 
of the infants of pagans: that, forsooth, because they are debarred from 
the sacrament of baptism, among the millions who die without actual 
transgression, there is not one elect infant ! Are all these lost? 

Last, the Scriptures everywhere hold out the truth, that the Word is 
the great means of redemption ; and it is plainly indicated that it is 
the only essential means. See Rom. x : 14 ; 2 Tim. iii : 15. 

X. Sacraments should be Administered only by Ministers. — 
The traditions and usages of the Church as to lay administration of 
sacraments have been in the main very uniform. It has always been 
condemned. The inordinate importance attached to baptism did in- 
deed lead the Romish Church, (and after her, the English,) to decide 
that the baptism of a layman, and even of a woman, was valid, though 
irregular, if the child was in extremis, and no priest at hand. Even 
this, most Presbyterians would condemn as utterly invalid. The Ger- 
man antiquaries (e. g., IMomeim) sometimes assert that in the primitive 
Church any person who made a convert felt authorized to baptize him. 
This appears to me very doubtful. Ignatius, for instance, who is, if 
genuine, one of the earliest Apostolic Fathers, says that the Eucharist 
which the Bishop celebrates should alone be considered a valid one ; 
and that no one should presume to baptize, except the Bishop, or one 
commissioned by him. This is certainly the language of uniform anti- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 211 

quity, expressed in Councils and Fathers. Nor is it merely the result 
of clerical ambition and exclusiveness. Since the sacraments are a 
solemn and formal representation of Gospel truth by symbols, a sort of 
pantomimic Word, it seems most reasonable that the exhibition of them 
should be reserved to the same class to whom is committed the author- 
itative preaching of the Word. And it may be urged, with yet more 
force, that since the presbyters, and especially the pastor of the 
Church, are the guardians of the sealing ordinances, responsible for 
their defence against abuse and profanation, it is reasonable, yea, 
necessary, that they should have the control of their administration. 
This consideration seems to me to have the force of a just and necessary 
inference. Again the great commission (Matt, xxviii : 19, Mark xvi ; 
15) seems evidently to give the duties of preaching and baptizing to 
the same persons. The persons primarily addressed were the apostles; 
but the apostles as representative of the whole Church. To deny this 
would be to deny to all but apostles authority to preach, and a share 
in the gracious promise of Christ's presence which accompanies the 
commission,- and this again would compel us to admit that the right to 
preach, and the promise of Christ's blessing, have been lost to the whole 
Church for nearly 1800 years, or else to accept the Episcopal conclu- 
sion that the apostolic office still continues. Hence, the argument from 
the commission gives only probable proof. This, however, is strengthened 
by the fact that there is no instance in Scripture of any sacraments 
administered by any except men who weremmisters of the gospel, either 
by charism, or by ordination. Perhaps the most practical argument 
against lay administration of sacraments is, from the intolerable disor- 
ders and divisions, which have always arisen, and must ever arise, from 
such a usage. The sacraments have this use among others, to be badges 
and pledges of Church-membership. The control of them cannot there- 
fore be given to others than the appointed rulers of the Church j to do 
so is utter disorganisation. 

XL Indelible Character Refuted. — The Council of Trent teaches 
that the three sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and orders, can 
never be repeated, because they imprint on the recipient an indelible 
■character. They have not, indeed, been able to decide what this char- 
acter is, nor on what part of man it is imprinted. It cannot be the 
graces of redemption ; because Rome teaches that they may all be 
iost by the true believer, through backsliding, while this character can 
never be lost, to whatever apostacy the man may sink ; and because she 
teaches that the recipient in a state of mortal sin receives no graces 
through the sacrament, yet he would receive the i character.' And 
again, all the sacraments confer grace, whereas only these three confer 
* character'' indelibly. Nor can it be any other sort of qualification for 
office (in ordination, for instance,) for men lose all qualification through 
infirmity, dotage, or heresy; yet they never lose the 'character.' Nor 
can they decide on what it is imprinted, whether on the body, mind, 
conscience, or affections. This uncertainty, together with the utter si- 
lence of the Scriptures, is the sufficient refutation of the absurdity. If 
you seek for the motive of Rome in endorsing such a doctrine, you will 
find it in her lust of power. By every baptism she acquires a subject of 
her ghostly empire, and every ordination, while it confers on the cler- 



212 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

gyman a ghostly eminence, also binds him in the tenfold bonds of the 
iron despotism of the canon law. Now, it suits the grasping and des- 
potic temper of Rome to teach that these bonds of allegiance are inex- 
orable : that when they are once incurred, no apostacy, no act of the 
subject's choice or will, can ever make him less a subject, or enable him 
to evade the tyrannical hand of bis mistress. 

As to confirmation and orders, we do not feel bound to solve any 
questions concerning their sacramental character, because we do nob 
believe them to be sacraments. As to baptism, we assign this reason 
why it is never to be repeated to the same subject like the Lord's sup- 
per : It is the initiating sacrament, like circumcision. The man who is 
in the house needs no repeated introduction into the house . It " sig- 
nifies our ingrafting into Christ." He who is grafted in once is virtu- 
ally united, and requires no new union to be constituted. 



LECTURE LX1 



SYLLABUS. 
BAPTISM. 

1. Is water baptism, by God's appointment, a permanent ordinance in the 
Church ? 

Turrettin,, Loc. XIX, Que. 12. Hill, Bk. V, ch. 6, § 1. 

2. What are the signification and effects of baptism r Consider the doctrine 
of baptismal regeneration. Does baptism represent, as Immersionists say, the 
burial and resurrection of Christ? 

Turrettin, Que. 19, § 1-16. Armstrong on Baptism, Part II, ch. 2; Part I„ 
ch. 8 and 9. Dick. Lect., 89. 

3. What formulary of words should accompany baptism ? and what their signi- 
fication ? Are any other formalities admissible ? or sponsors ? 

Turrettin, Que., 17. Dick. Lect., 88 and 89. Knapp, § 139. 

4. Was John's baptism the Christian sacrament of the new dispensation ? For 
what signification was Christ baptized by him ? 

Turrettin, Que. 16. Armstrong, Part I, ch. 9. Dick. Lect., 88. Calvin's 
Inst., Bk. IV, ch. 15, § 1 and 18. 

5. State the classic, and then the scriptural meanings of the words bapto and 
baptldzo, and their usage when applied in the Septuagint and New Testament to 
Levitical washings. 

Armstrong, Part I, ch. 3, 4, 5. Rice & Campbell's Debate, Prop. Dale's 
Classic B.ipt. Dale's Judaic Baptism. Carson on Bapt. 

6. Show that a change of meaning and mode takes place in the word baptidzo 
in passing from a secular to a sacred use. 

Armstrong, Part I, ch. 1, &c. 

I. Water Baptism Perpetual. — 'The general remarks made con- 
cerning the sacraments, and applied to baptism, will not be repeated. 
The earlier Socinians disputed the perpetual obligation of water-bap- 



OF LECTURES LN THEOLOGY. 213 

tism, as the Quakers now do of both the sacraments, and on similar 
grounds. They plead that the new is intended to be a spiritual dis- 
pensation ; that saltation is always in the New Testament conditioned 
essentially on the state of heart: that Paul (1 Cor. i j 17) says, "Christ 
sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel :" and that the water- 
baptism administered by the apostles was only a temporary badge to 
separate the Church from Jews and Pagans at its outset. Quakers sup- 1 
pose that the only sacraments to be observed in our day are those of 
the heart, the baptism of the Holy Grhost, and the feeding on Christ by 
faith. The answers are; That the Old Testament, with its numerous 
types and two sacraments, was also a spiritual dispensation, and saving 
benefits were then, just as much as now, conditioned on the state ef 
the heart; that the commission to baptize men was evidently co-exten- 
sive with that to disciple and teach them, as is proved by the accompa- 
nying promise of grace; that the commission io baptize lasts at least 
till all nations are converted, which is not yet accomplished \ that it 
was after the most glorious experiences of the true spiritual baptism, 
at Pentecost, that the water-baptism was most industriously adminis- 
tered ; and that Paul only expresses the inferior importance of baptiz- 
ing to preaching, and his thankfulness at having baptized only three 
persons at Corinth, in view of the unpleasant fact that that Church was 
ranking itself in parties according to the ministers who introduced 
them to membership. 

II. Meaning of Baptism. — The folly and falsehood of baptismal 
regeneration have been already pointed out in the former lecture. All 
the arguments there aimed agaiust the Opus opefatum apply here. The 
error most probably grew as superstition increased in the primitive 
Church, out of the unguarded use of the sacramental language by the 
early fathers, whose doctrine on this point was sounder. We know that 
baptism, in supposed imitation of Titus iii : 5, was currently called re- 
generation as early as Justin Martyr and Irenasus. It is easy to see 
how, as men's ideas of sacred subjects became more gross, this figura- 
tive use of the word introduced the real error. 

According to the Shorter Catechism (Qu, 94) baptism " doth signify 
and seal our ingrafting into Christ, and partaking of the benefits of the 
covenant of grace, and our engagements to be the Lord's/' And in 
the Confession, chapter 28, those benefits of the covenant of grace are 
farther explained to be remission of sins and regeneration. Each part 
of this definition we can abundantly substantiate from Scripture. See 
Gal. iii ; 27 ; Rom. vi : 5 ; Jno. iii; o ; Titus iii : 5 ; Col. ii : 11, 12, &c. ; 
Acts ii : 38 ; Mark i : 4 ; Acts xxii : 16, &c. ; Rom. vi s 8, 4 ; 1 Cor. xii ; 
13. 

Derived from Jewish Purifications. — -One of the most remark- 
able things about Baptism to the attentive reader of Scripture is the 
absence of all set explanations of its meaning in the New Testament, 
and at the same time, of all appearance of surprise at its novelty. 
Not so with the other sacrament, although that was a continuation of 
the familiar Passover. These things, among others, convince me that 
Baptism was no novelty to the Jews, either in its form or signification. 
It was the thing symbolized by the Hebrews purifications (katharimoi). 
The idea of the purification included both cleansing and consecration ; 






214 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

and the formalities represented both the removal of impurity from the 
person, in order that it might be adapted to the service of a holy God, 
and the consequent dedication to Him. Now, the main idea of Bap- 
tism is purification : and the element applied, the detergent element of 
nature, symbolizes the two-fold application of Christ's atonement 
(called His blood) and the Holy Ghost, cleansing from gmlt and deprav- 
ity, and thus also consecrating the cleansed person to the service of a 
holy God. Here then, we have involved, the ideas of regeneration and 
remission, and also of engrafting and covenanting into Christ's service. 
This view will- be farther substantiated in treating the words baptis- 
MOS, &c. 

Does Baptism Commemorate Christ's Burial and Resurrection 1 
Now the Immersionists, (for what purpose we shall see), have departed 
from the uniform faith of Christendom on this point : and while they 
do not wholly discard the purification, make baptism primarily [sym- 
bolical of Christ's burial and resurrection. They teach that, as the 
supper commemorates His death, so baptism commemorates His burial 
and rising again. True the believer, in commemorating His death in 
the supper, receives also a symbol of the benefits purchased for us 
therein. So, in commemorating His burial and resurrection, there is 
a symbolizing of our burial to sin, and living again unto holiness. But 
the main meaning is, to set forth Christ's burial and resurrection. 
Only three texts can be quoted for this view. Rom. vi : 3-5 ; Col. ii : 12, 
and 1 Cor. xv : 29, and especially the first. 

Disproved. No Scripture proof.— Now our first objection to this 
view is its lack of all Bible support. He would be a hardy man, who 
would base any theory on the exposition of a passage so obscure as 1 
Cor. xv : 29, We shall not discuss it, until some exposition is adduced 
which is at least probable. The other two passages are substantially 
identical : and, under the figure of a death and rising again, they obvi- 
ously represent a regeneration. Compare especially Col. ii : 11,12; 
Rom. vi : 4. So likewise the figures of circumcision, planting, and 
crucifixion, all represent the same, regeneration. This the immersion- 
ist nimself cannot deny. The baptism here spoken of is, then, not di- 
rectly a water baptism at all: but the spiritual baptism thereby repre- 
sented. Col. ii j 11. It is the circumcision "made Without hands" 
Rom. vi ; 3, 4. It is a baptism not into water, but into deaf), i. e., a 
death to carnality. Therefore it is clear the symbolism here points to 
the grace of regeneration, and not to any supposed grace in Christ's bu- 
rial. His burial and resurrection are themselves used here as symbols, 
to represent regeneration. As justly might the immersionist say that 
baptism commemorates a crucifixion, a planting, a building, a change of 
a stone into flesh, a putting off dirty garments: because these are all 
Scripture figures of regeneration, of which baptism is a figure. Nor is 
there in these famous passages any reference to the mode of baptism, 
because first the Apostle's scope in Rom. vi, forbids it : and second, the 
same mode of interpretation would compel us to find an analogy in the 
mode of baptism, to a plauting and a crucifixion. See Scott, in loco. 

No proper Sacramental analogy. — But second: by making bap- 
tism the commemoration of Christ's burial, and resurrection, the sac- 
ramental analogy (as well as the warrant) is totally lost. This analogy 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 215 

is not in the element to the grace ; for in that aspect, there can he no re- 
semblance. Water is not like a tomb, nor like the Holy G-host, nor like 
Christ's atoning righteousness. Nor is bread like a man's body, nor 
wine like his blood. The selection of the sacramental element is not 
founded on a resemblance, but on an analogy. Distinguish. The bread 
and wine are elements, not because they are like a body and blood, in 
their qualities : but because there is an analogy in their uses, to nour- 
ish and cheer. So the water is an element of a sacrament, because 
there is an analogy in its uses, to the thing symbolized. The use of 
water is to cleanse. Where now is any analogy to Christ's burial ? 
Nor is there even a resemblance in the action, not even when the im- 
mersionist's mode is granted. Water is not like a Hebrew tomb. The 
temporary demission of a man into the former, to be instantly raised 
out of it, is not like a burial. 

Christ's burial not vital. — Third: If we may judge by the two 
sacraments of the old dispensation, and by the supper, sacraments (al- 
ways few,) are only adopted by God to be commemorative of the most 
cardinal transactions of redemption. Christ's burial was not such. 
Christ's burial is nowhere proposed to us an essential object of faith. 
His death and the Spirit's work are. His death and resurrection are ; 
the former already commemorated in the other sacrament. And be- 
sides : it would seem strange that the essential work of the Holy Ghost 
should be commemorated by no sacrament, while that of Christ is com- 
memorated by two ! In the old dispensation the altar and the laver 
stood side by side. And here would be a two-fold covenant, with two 
seals to one of its promises, and none to the other ! 

And last: the Immersionsionist is involved by his theory in 'intense 
confusions. In the gospel history, Christ's death preceded His burial 
and resurrection, so the commemoration of the death ought to precede. 
But the Immersionist makes it follow, with peculiar rapidity. Again : 
the Supper was only practised either when the death was already ac- 
complished, or immediately at hand ; so that its commemoration intent 
was at once obvious. But the baptism was instituted long before the 
burial. Did it then point forward to it? Are sacraments types? And 
this difficulty presses peculiarly on the immersionist, who makes John's 
baptism identical with Christian. What then did John's baptism sig- 
nify to Jews, before Christ was either dead or buried, and before these 
events were foreknown by them? 

III. Baptism in Whose Name ? — In Matt, xxviii : 19 the formulary 
of words to be employed is given by Christ explicitly, eis to onoma, 
&c, and this preposition is retained in every case but one. Had our 
Saviour said that baptism should be en to onomati (dative) &c, his 
meaning would have appeared to be that the rite was applied by the 
authority of that name, i. e., hebraice, of that person. The one case 
in which this formulary occurs (Acts x : 48) is probably to be explained 
in this way; but the uniform observance of the other formulary, in all 
the other cases (especially see 1 Cor. i : i3 and x :.3), indicates clearly 
that the meaning of the rite is, that it purifies and dedicates us unto 
the Trinity, bringing us into a covenant relation to Him. Here we see 
an additional argument for the definition given in § I of the meaning 
of baptism, and against the Immersionist idea. 



21G SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Cases are not unfrequent (e. g., in Acts viii : 16, x: 48, xix : 5) in 
which no name is mentioned but that of Christ. But I think we are 
by no means to infer hence that the apostles ever omitted auy of the 
formulary enjoined by Christ. Jews would have no objection to a bap- 
tism to God the Father. (John's was such, and exceedingly popular.) 
They were used to them. But Christ Jesus was the stumbling-block; 
and hence when the historian would indicate that a Hebrew had made 
:i thorough submission to the new dispensation, he would think it 
enongh to say that he had assumed Christ's name. The rest was then 
easy to believe and was therefore left to be inferred. 

Supeerstitious Adjuncts. — The Church of Borne accompanied bap- 
tism with a number of superstitious rites, of which she still retains the 
most, and her daughter, the Church of England, a part. They were, 
blessing the water in the font, exorcism, renouncing the Devil, anointing 
in the form of a cross, anointing the eye-lids and ears with spittle, breath- 
ing on the candidate, washing the whole body in pur is naturalibus, the 
baptism proper, tasting salt and honey, putting on the white robe, or 
at least, taking hold of a white cloth, and imposition of hands. The 
last, now separated from baptism, constitutes the sacrament of confir- 
mation. We repudiate all these, for two reasons: that they are unau- 
thorized by Scripture, and, worse than this, that their use is suggestive 
of positive error and superstition. 

Sponsors. — The use of sponsors, who are now always other than the 
proper parents (when any sponsors are used), in the Episcopal and Rom- 
ish churches, has grown from gradual additions. In the early Church 
the sponsors were always the natural parents of the infant, except iu 
cases of orphanage and slavery; and then they were either the master, 
or some deacon or deaconess. (See Bingham, p. 523, &c.) When an 
adult was in extremis, and even speechless, or maniacal, or insensible, 
if it could be proved that he had desired baptism, he was permitted to 
receive it, and some one stood sponsor for him. If he recovered, this 
sponsor was expected to watch over his religious life and instruction. 
And in the case of Catechumens, the sponsor was at first some clergy- 
man or deaconess, who undertook his religious guidance. It was a uni- 
versal rule that no one was allowed to be sponsor unless he undertook 
this bona fide. How perverted is this usage now! Our great objection 
to the appearance of any one but the natural parents, where there are 
any, or in other cases, of him who is in loco parentis, as sponsors, is this : 
that no other human has the right to dedicate the child, and no other 
has the opportunity and authority to train it for God. To take these 
vows in any other sense is mockery. 

Nature of John's Baptism. — The Reformers strenuously identify 
John's baptism with the Christian, arguing that his mission was a sort 
of dawn of the new dispensation, that it was the baptism of repentance, 
an evangelical grace , and that it is also stated (Luke iii : 3) to be for 
the remission of sins. But later Calvinists hold, against them and the 
Immersionists, that it was a baptism for a different purpose, and there- 
fore not the same sacramentally, however it may have resembled as 
to mode, that of the Christian Church. Their reasons are, that 
it was not administered in the name of the Trinity, and did not bring 
the parties into covenant with Christ. 2nd. It was not the initiatory 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 217 

rite into the Church, and did not signify our ingrafting into Christ, for 
the old dispensation still subsisted, and those who received the rite 
were already in the Church of that dispensation, whereas Christ's was 
not yet opened, and therefore could not receive formal adherents. But, 
3d, Paul seems clearly (Acts xix : 5) to have repeated Christian bap- 
tism on those who already had John's. Calvin and Turrettin indeed 
evade this fact by making verse 5 the words of Paul (not of Luke), re- 
citing the fact that these brethren had already (when they heard John) 
received baptism. But this gloss is proved erroneous, not only by the 
whole drift of the passage (why had they not received charisms?), by 
the force of the men and de, but above all by this : that if this verse 5 
means John's baptism, then John baptized in the name of Jesus. But 
see Jno. i: 33 ; Matt, xi : 3. John's baptism was therefore not the sa- 
crament of the new dispensation, but one of those purifications, prepar- 
ing the way of the Messiah about to come, with which, we believe, the 
Jewish miud was familiar. 

Ini ent of Christ's Baptism. — The interesting question arises : With 
what intent and meaning did Christ submit to it ? He could not re- 
pent, and needed no remission. We think it clear He could not have 
taken it in these senses. Says Turrettin : He took it vicariously, doing 
for His people, all that anyone of them owed, to fulfill the law in their 
stead ; and lie refers, for support, to the fact that He punctually con- 
formed to all the Levitical ritual, — was circumcised, attended sacri- 
fices, &c. But note : His circumcision is not mentioned ; compare with 
particular recital of John's, and it will not appear to be demonstrated 
that Christ was indeed circumcised. But the cases are not parallel. 
Christ as a Jew, (according to His humanity,) would properly render 
obedience to all the rules of the dispensation under which He came 
vicariously : but it is not therefore proper that He should comply with 
the rules of a dispensation to be wholly founded on Him as Mediator, 
and which rules were all legislated b I Him. This for those who asse rt 
that John's baptism was the Christian Sacrament. There is no evi- 
dence that Christ partook of His other sacrament. See Luke xxii : 17. 
And while His vicarious attitude would make a ceremonial purification 
from guilt appropriate, it would not make a rite significant of repent - 
ance appropriate. Christ did not repeat for imputed guilt, which di d 
not stain His character. Nor would the other part of the signification 
apply to Him : for this imputed guilt was not pardoned to Him: He 
paid the debt to the full. 

It was His consecration to Priesthood. — There seems then, to be 
no explanation; except that Christ's baptism was His priestly inaugu- 
ration. John, himself an Aaronic priest, might naturally administer it. 
His age confirms it ; compare Luke iii : 23, with Numb iv : 3. A puri- 
fication by water was a part of the original consecration of the Aaronic 
family. See Levit. viii : 6 ; or better, Exod. xxx : 17-21, &c. The 
unction Christ received immediately after, by the descent of the Holy 
Ghost. And last, John's language confirms it, together with the im- 
mediate opening of Christ's official work. 

V. Real Question as to Mode. Neither Etymology nor Secu- 
lar use defines it. — We now approach the vexed question, of the 
mode of baptism. The difference between us and immersionists is only 
this: whether the entire immersion of the body in water is essential to 



218 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

valid baptism. For we admit, any application of water, by an ordained 
ministry, in the name of the Trinity, to be valid baptism. The ques- 
tion concerning the mode is of course one of meaning and usage of the 
words descriptive of the ordinance. But this preliminary question 
arises : of what usage 1 that of the classic, or of Hellenistic Greek ? 
We answer, chiefly the latter; for the obvious reason, that this was the 
idiom to which the writers of the New Testament were accustomed, 
especially when speaking Greek on a sacred subject. And this, en- 
lightened immersionists scarcely dispute. Another preliminary ques- 
tion arises: should it be found that the usage of the words baptidzo, 
&c, when applied to common and secular washings, gives them one uni- 
form meaning, would that be evidence enough that its meaning was 
precisely the same, in passing to a sacred ritual, and assuming a tech- 
nical, sacred sense 1 I reply, by no means. There is scarcely a word, 
which has been borrowed from secular into sacred language, which does 
not undergo a necessary modification of meaning. Is Ekklesia the 
same word in the Scriptures, which it is in common secular Greek 1 
Presbyter means an elderly person, an ambassador, a magistrate. Is 
this the precise meaning of the Church presbyter of the New Testa- 
ment? He might be a young man. Above all is this change marked 
in the word for the other sacrament, Deipnon. This word in secular, 
social use, whether in or out of Scripture, means, the evening meal ; 
and usually a full one, often a banquet, in which the bodily appetite 
was liberally fed. The Lord's Supper is usually not at evening ; it is 
not a meal ; and by its design has no refei-ence to satisfying the stomach, 
or nourishing the body. See 1 Cor. xi. Indeed, it is impossible to 
adopt a secular and known word, as the name of this peculiar institu- 
tion, a Christian Sacrament, without, in the very act of adopting it, 
superinducing upon it some shade of meaning different from its secular. 
Even if the favorite word of the Immersionists, immersion, were adopt- 
ed, as the established name in English, of the sacrament, it would ipso 
facto receive an immediate modification of meaning as a sacramental 
word. Not any immersion whatever would constitute a sacrament. 
So that this very specific word would then require some specification. 
Thus we see that the assertion of the Immersionist, that Baptidzo is a 
purely specific word, and, as a name of a sacrament, admits of no de- 
finition as to mode, would be untrue, even if it were perfectly specific 
in its common secular meaning, both in and out of Scripture. We might 
grant then, that Baptidzo, whenever non-ritual, is nothing but plunge, 
dip under, and still sustain our cause. 

VI. Immersionist Postulate as to Usage of Words. — But we 
grant no such thing. Let it be borne in mind that the thing the Im- 
mersionist must prove is no less than this: that baptidzo, &c, never 
can mean, in secular uses, whether in or out of the Scriptures, anything 
but dip under, plunge ; for nothing less will prove that nothing but 
dipping wholly under is valid baptism. If the words mean frequently 
plunging, but sometimes wetting or washing without plunging, their 
cause is lost. For then it is no longer absolutely specific of mode. Let 
us then examine first the non-ritual or secular usage of the words, both 
in Hellenistic (Sept. Josephus) Creek and in the New Testament. We 
freely admit that bapto very often means to dip, and baptidzo still 
more often, nay, usually, but not exclusively. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 21 9 

The Koot "Bapto " to be Examined. — And first, the trick of Car- 
son is to be exposed, by which he endeavors to evade the examination 
of the shorter form, bapto, on the plea that baptidzo and its deriva- 
tives are the only ones ever used in relation to the sacrament of bap- 
tism. True; but by what process shall we more properly discover the 
meaning of baptidzo than by going to that of its root bapto, from 
which it is formed by the simple addition of idzo, meaning verbal ac- 
tivity (the making of anything to beBAPT.) Well, we find the lexicons 
all defining bapto, dip, wash, stain. Suidas, pluno, to wash clothes. 
These definitions are sustained by the well known case, from the class- 
ics, of Homer's lake, bebammenon, tinged with the blood of a dying 
mouse, which Carson himself gives up. But among the instances from 
Hellenistic Greek, the more important to our purpose, consult the fol- 
lowing : Rev. six: 13, a vesture stained with blood, bebammenon ; 
Luke xvi : 24 ; Ex. xii : 22: 1 Sam. xiv: 27 ; Levit. iv: 6, 7 ; Dan. iv : 33. So 
there are cases of the secular use of the word baptidzo where immersion 
is not expressed. See the lexicons quoted by Dr. Owen and Rice, in 
which it is defined, not only to immerse, but also to wash, substantiated 
by the cases of " the blister baptized with breast milk," in classic 
Greek, and of the altar, wood and victim of Elijah baptized by pouring 
on water, in Origen. Hence, the common and secular usage is not uni- 
formly in favor of dipping. 

Baptidzo not Always Dip. — But if it were, the question would 
still be an open one ; for it may well be, that when transferred to reli- 
gious ritual, the word will undergo some such modification as we saw 
uniformly occur in all other words transferred thus. We proceed then 
one step nearer, and examine the meaning of the word in the Septua- 
gint and New Testament, when applied to religious rituals, other than 
the Christian sacrament itself; that is, to Jewish purifications. And 
here we find that the specific idea of the Jewish religious baptism was 
not dipping, but an act symbolical of purification, of which the actual 
mode was in most cases by affusion. In 2 Kings v : 14, Naaman bap- 
tized himself (baptidzo) seven times in Jordan. This may have been 
dipping, but taking into account the Jewish modes of purification, was 
more probably by affusion. In Eccl's xxxiv : 25, the Septuagint says : 
" He that baptizeth himself (baptidzetai) after he toucheth a dead 
body, if he touch it again, what availeth his washing V How this 
baptism was performed, the reader may see in Numb, xxxi: 19, 24, and 
xix: 13-20. In Judith xii: 7, this chaste maiden is said to have bap- 
tized herself at a fountain of water by a vast camp ! In Josephus Antiq. 
Bk. 4, ch. 4, the ashes of the red heifer used in purifying are said to 
be baptized in spring water. 

New Testament Use of the Verb Not Always Dip. — In the New 
Testament there are four instances where the Jewish ritual purifica- 
tions are described by the term baptize ; and in all four cases it was 
undoubtedly by affusion. Mark vii : 4 ; Luke xi : 38 ; John ii : 6 ; Heb. 
ix : 10, vi; 2. (The last may possibly be Christian baptism, though its 
use in the plural would rather show that it included the Jewish.) Now 
that all these purifications called here baptismoi, were by affusion, we 
learn, 1. From the Levitical law, which describes various washings and 
sprinklings, but not one immersion of a man's person for purification, 2. 



220 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

From well known antique habits still prevalent in the East, which lim- 
ited the washings to the hands and feet, and performed them by affu- 
sion. Compare 2 Kings iii : 11 ; Exod. xxx: 21. 3. From comparison 
of the two passages, Mark vii ; 4, and Luke xi : 38, with Jno. ii : 6« 
These water pots were too narrow at the mouth, and too small (holding 
about 2 bushels) to receive a person's body, and were such as were 
borne on the shoulders of female servants. 4. From the great impro- 
bability that Jews would usually immerse all over so often, or that they 
could. 5. From the fact that they are declared to have practised, not 
only these baptisms of their persons, but of their utensils and massive 
couches. Numb, xix : 17, 18. It is simply preposterous that these 
should have been immersed as often as ceremonially defiled. Last, the 
Levitical law, which these Jews professed to observe with such strict- 
ness, rendered an immersion impossible any where but in a deep run- 
ning stream, or living pit of a fountain. For if any thing ceremonially 
unclean went into a vessel of standing water, no matter whether large 
or small, the water was thereby defiled, and the vessel, and all other 
water put into that vessel, and all persons who got into it. See Levit, 
xi : 32, 36. 

It is true that Immersionists pretend to quote Talmudists (of whom 
I, and probably they, know nothing), saying that these purifications 
were by immersion ; and that Solomon's 'sea ' was for the priests to 
swim in. But the Talmud is 700 years A. D., and excessively absurd. 

Inference. — Now, if the religious baptisms of the Jews were not by 
dipping, but by affusion; if their specific idea was that of religious puri- 
fication, and not dipping ; and if Christian baptism is borrowed from 
the Jewish, and called by the same name, without explanation, can 
any one believe that dipping is its specific and essential form? Im- 
mersionists acknowledge the justice of our inference by attempting to 
dispute all the premises. Hard task ! 



LECTURE LXIL 



SYLLABUS. 
BAPTISM. (Continued.) 

7. "What would most probably be tbe mode of baptism adopted for a universal 
rsligion ? 

Ridgely, Qu. 166. 

8. What mode is most appropriate to the symbolical meaning of baptism ? 
Consult Is. Iii : 15 ; compare Matt, iii : 11 ; Acts i : 5, ii : 2 and 4, ii : 15-18, 
ii : 33, x : 44-48, xi : 16, 17. Alexander on Isaiah. Armstrong on Bap- 
tism. Review of Theodosia Ernest. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 221 

9. What mode appears most probable from the analogy of the figurative and 
spiritual baptisms of Matt, xx : v. 20-23 ; Mark x : 38, 39 ; Luke xii : 50 : 1 Cor. x ; 
2 ; 1 Pet. iii : 21 ; 1 Cor. xii ; 13 : Gal. iii : 37 • Epb. iv : 5 ; Rom. vi : 3 ; Col. ii : 12. 

See Armstrong on Baptism, Pt. I, ch. 6th and 8th. 
Commentaries on Scriptures cited. 

10. Argue the mode from Jno. 3 : 25, 2G. 
Armstrong on Baptism, Pt. I, ch. 2. 

11. Discuss the probable mode observed in John's baptisms in Jordan and at 
iEnon, the Eunuch's, Paul's, the three thousand's at Pentecost, Cornelius', the 
Philippian jailor's. 

Armstrong, Pt. II, ch. 3, 4. Dr. Leonard Woods on Baptism. Taylor's 
Apostolic Baptism. Robinson's Researches in Palestine. Commentaries. 
Review of Tbeodosia Ernest. 

12. What would be the ecclesiastical results of the Immersionist dogma ? 
Review of Theodosia Ernest. 

13. What was the cuitomary mode of baptism in the early Church, subsequent 
to the Apostles ? 

Bingham's " Origines Sacra;," Art. " Bapt." Taylor's Apostolic Baptism. 
Church Histories. Review of Theodosia Ernest. 

See on whole, Rice and Campbell's Debate. Fairchild on Baptism. Beech- 
er on Baptism. 

VII. Dipping Impracticable Sometimes. — A consideration of some 
probable weight may be drawn from the fact that Christianity is in- 
tended to be a univei'sal religion. Remember that it is characterized 
by fewness and simplicity of rites, that it is rather spiritual than rit- 
ual, that its purpose was to make those rites the reverse of burden- 
some, and that the elements of the other sacraments were chosen from 
articles common, cheap, and near at hand. Now, in many extensive 
countries, water is too scarce too make it convenient to accumulate 
enough for an immersion ; in other regions, all waters are frozen over 
during hclf the year. In many cases infirmity of body renders immer- 
sion highly incouveuient and even dangerous. It seems not very pro- 
bable that, under these circumstances, a dispensation so little formal- 
istic as the Christian, would have made immersion essential to the va- 
lidity of baptism, for a universal Church, amidst all climes and habits. 

VIII. (trace Symbolized is Always Shed Forth. — -But we derive 
an argument of far more importance from the obviously correct analogy 
between the act of affusion and the graces signified and sealed in bap- 
tism. It is this which Immersionists seek to evade when they en- 
deavor, contrary to Scripture, to make baptism signify and commemo- 
rate primarily Christ's burial and resurrection. (Hence the importance 
of refuting that dream.) The student will remember that the selection 
of the element is founded, not upon the resemblance of its nature (for 
of this there can be none, between the material and spiritual), but on 
the analogy of its use to the graces symbolized. Water is the detergent 
element of nature. The great meaning of baptism is our cleansing from 
guilt by atonement (blood), and our cleansing from the depravity of 
heart by the Holy Ghost. Now, in all Bible language, without a sin- 
gle exception, atonement is symbolized as sprinkled, or affused, or put 
on ; and the renewing Spirit, as descending, or poured, or falling. See 
all the Jewish usages, and the whole tenour of the promises. Levit. 
xiv : 4, 51, xvi : 14 ; Numb, viii : 7, xix : 18 ; Heb. ix : 19-22, especially 
last verse, ix : 14, x : 22 ; Levit. vii : 14 ; Exod. xxix : 16, 21, &c; Ps. 
xlv : 2 ; Is. xliv : 3 ; Ps. lxxii : 6 ; Is. xxxii : 15 ; Joel ii : 28, 29, quoted 
in Acts ii. 



222 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Isaiah, and other Old Testament Instances. — Nor is the force 
of this analogy a mere surmise of ours. See Is. lii : 15, where it is de- 
clared that the Redeemer, by His mediatorial, aud especially his suffering 
work, " shall sprinkle many nations." The immediate reference here 
doubtless is not to water baptism, but to that which it signifies. But when 
God chooses in His own Word to call those baptismal graces a sprink- 
ling, surely it gives no little authority to the belief that water baptism 
is by sprinkling ! Immersionists feel this so acutely that they have 
ever availed themselves of the infidel glosses of the G-erman Rational- 
ists, who, to get rid of the Messianic features of this glorious prophecy, 
render yazzeh 'to cause to start up,' ' to startle.' The only plea they 
bring for this unscrupulous departure from established usage of the 
word is, that in all the other places this verb has as its regimen the 
element sprinkled, and not the object. This objection Br. J. A. Alex- 
ander pronounces frivolous, and denies any Hebrew or Arabic support 
to the substituted translation. Again : In Ezek. xxxvi : 25, are pro- 
mises which, although addressed primarily to the Jews of the Captiv- 
ity, are evidently evangelical : and there the sprinkling of clean water 
symbolizes the gospel blessings of regeneration, remission, and spiritual 
indwelling. The language is so strikingly favourable to us, that it seems 
hardly an overstraining of it to suppose it a prediction of the very sa- 
crament of baptism. But this we do not claim. 

New Testament Examples of Grace by Affusion. — Our argument 
is greatly strengthened when we proceed to the New Testament. Col- 
late Matt, iii : 11 ; Acts i : 5, ii : 2-4 ; ii : 15-18, ii : 33, x : 44, 45, 48, 
xi : 16,17. Here our argument is two-fold. First: that both John 
and Christ baptize with water, not in water. This language is wholly 
appropriate to the application of water to the person, wholly inappro- 
priate to the application of the person to the water. No Immersionist 
would speak of dipping with water. They do indeed reclaim that the 
preposition is en, here translated with, and should in all fidelity be ren- 
dered in, according to its admitted use in the large majority of New 
Testament cases. This we utterly deny ; first, because in the mouth of 
a Hebraistic Greek, en being the established equivalent and translation 
of by, may naturally and frequently mean with ; but second and chiefly 
because the parallel locutions of Luke 3 : 16, Acts i : 5, xi : 16, Eph. v : 
26 ; Heb. x : 22, identify the en udate, &c, with the ablative of instru- 
ment. And from the same passages we argue farther, that the mode of 
the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire, is fixed most indisputably 
by the description of the event in Acts ii : 2 and 4. The long promised 
baptism occurred. And what was it ? It was the sitting of tongues of 
fire on each Apostle, and the " descent," the fall, the '' pouring out," 
the " shedding forth," of the spiritual influences. To make the case still 
stronger, if possible, when the spiritual effusion on Cornelius and his 
house oecurred, which made Peter feel that he was justified in author- 
izing their water-baptism, he informs his disapproving brethren in Jeru- 
salem (Acts xi : 15, 16) that the "falling of the Holy Ghost on them as 
on us as at the beginning," caused him " to remember" the great promise 
of a baptism, not with water only, but with the Holy Ghost and with 
fire. If baptism is never an affusion, how could such a suggestion ever 
arise? 

Evasions Answered. — This reasoning is so cogent that Immersion* 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 223 

ists feel the necessity of an evasion. Their Coryphseus, Carson, sug- 
gests two. No element, nor mode of applying an element, he says, can 
properly symbolize the essence of the Holy Ghost. It is immense, im- 
material, unique. All men are at all times immersed in it. To sup- 
pose any analogy between water affused, and this infinite, spiritual es- 
sence, is gross materialism. Very true ; yet here is some sort and sense 
in which a baptism with the Holy Ghost occurred; and if it is gross 
anthropo-morphism to liken His ubiquitous essence to water affused, it 
is equally so to liken it to water for plunging. If there is no sense in 
which the analogy between the baptismal element and the influences of 
the Holy Ghost can be asserted, then it is God's Word which is in 
fault, for He has called the outpouring of those influences a baptism. 
The truth is, that here, just as when God is said to come, to go, to lift 
up His hand, it is n^S, the divine essence which changes its place, but 
its sensible influences. 

The other evasion is, to say that because this baptism is wholly figu- 
rative, and not a proper and literal baptism at all, therefore it can con- 
tain no reference whatever to mode. We deny both premise and con- 
clusion : theconclusion, because Immersionists infer mode, with great 
positiveness, from a merely figurative baptism, in Rom. vi : 4 ; and the 
premise, because the baptism of Pentecost was in the best sense real, 
the most real baptism that ever was in the world. It was, indeed, not 
material : but if its literal reality be denied, then the inspiration of the 
Apostles is denied, and the whole New Testament dispensation falls. 

This Argument Summed Up. — Our argument, then, is summed up 
thus: Here was a spiritual transaction, which Christ was pleased to call 
Jiis baptism, iu the peculiar sense. In this baptism the outward ele- 
ment descended upon the persons of the recipients, and the influences 
of the Holy Ghost, symbolized thereby, are spoken of as falling. Wa- 
ter baatism, which is intended, like the fire, to symbolize the spiritual 
baptism, should therefore be also applied by affusion. 

IX. Argument from Figurative Baptisms. — While we deny that 
these memorable events formed only a figurative baptism, yet the word 
baptism is used in Scripture in a sense more properly figurative and 
wholly non-sacramental. Immersionists profess to find in all these an 
allusion to dippiug ; but we shall show that in every case such allusion 
is uncertain or impossible. 

Christ's Baptism in Sorrow. — The first instance is that of Christ's 
baptism in His sufferings at His death. Matt, xx : 20, 23 : Mark x: 
38, 39 ; Luke xii : 50. Although Luke refers to a different conversa- 
tion, yet the allusion to his dying sufferings is undoubtedly the same. 
Now, it is common to say that these sufferings were called a baptism be- 
cause Christ was to be then covered with anguish as with an overwhelming 
flood. Even granting this, it must be remembered the Scriptures always 
speak of God's wrath as being poured out, and however copious the show- 
er, an effusion from above bears a very questionable resemblance to an 
immersion of the person into a body of liquid beneath. Some (as Dr. 
Armstrong) find in this figure no reference to the mode of baptism, but 
suppose that the idea is one of consecration simply. Christ is sup- 
posed to call his dying sufferings a baptism because by them He was 
inducted into His kingly office. But this is not wholly satisfactory. 



224 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

The true explanation is obviously that of the Greek fathers. As is 
well known to students of sacred history, the martyr's sufferings were 
considered hi? baptism. And so literal was the notion expressed by 
this, that the Fathers gravely argue that by martyrdom the unbaotized 
catechumen, who witnesses a good confession, becomes a baptized Chris- 
tian, and has no reason whatever to regret his lack of water baptism, 
supposed by them to be, in other cases, essential. To the question why 
martyrdom is called by them a baptism, they answer with one voice, be- 
cause Christ was pleased to call His own martyrdom a baptism, and to 
apply the same name to the pious sufferings of James and John. And 
they say farther, quoting the same texts, that the reason Christ calls 
His dying sufferings a baptism is, because they cleansed away sin, as the 
water of baptism symbolically does. Here, then, is no reference to 
mode of water baptism, and these Creek father* if they in any case 
press the figure to a signification of mode, speak of Christ's body as 
baptized, or stained with His own blood, a baptism by affusion. And 
the baptism of martyrdom is explained as a baptism of blood and fire. 

Israel's Baptism to Moses. — 1 Cor. x : 2 represents the Israelites 
as baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, in passing the Bed 
sea. Immersionists foolishly attempt to strain a reference to immersion 
here, by saying that the Israelites were surrounded with water, having 
the sea as a wall on the either hand, and the cloud over head. But 
unfortunately for this far-fetched idea, it is expressly said that Israel 
went over dry-shod. And the cloud was not over them, but behind them. 
Nor is there any proof that it was an aqueous cloud (it was fire by night 
and luminous); and the allegorizing Greek Fathers currently understand 
it as representing, not the water of baptism, but God's Holy Ghost. 
Nor have we any proof that even aqueous vapour can be substituted for 
the sacramental element. There was an immersion in the case, but it 
was that of Pharaoh and his hosts. The lost were immersed ; the saved 
were baptized unto Moses ! The sense of the passage obviously is, that 
by this event Israel were dedicated, separated unto that religious service 
of which Moses was the teacher. The word baptize here carries no 
reference to mode, but has his proper sense of religious separation. 

Believer's Baptism into Christ. — The same is its meaning in 1 
Cor. xii : 13 ; Gal. iii : 27 ; Eph. iv : 5, and 1 Pet. iii : 21. When the 
believer is said to be baptized into (or unto) Christ, or into His one body, 
and thus to have put on Christ, there can be no allusion to mode, be- 
cause then it would be the preposterous idea of immersing into Christ, 
or into His mystical body, instead of into water. The exact idea ex- 
pressed is that of a consecrating separation. Baptism is here conceived 
by the Apostle as our separation from the ruined mass of mankind and 
annexation to the Saviour in our mystical union. So in 1 Pet. iii: 21, 
baptism is called a figure like (antitupou) to the salvation of Noah's 
family in the ark. This saving was from water, not by water, and it 
was effected in the ark. Here again there is no modal reference to im- 
mersion, for the parties saved were not dipped, and all who were dipped 
were lost. The baptism of Noah's family was therefore their separation 
from a sinful world, effected by the waters of the flood. If baptism in 
its most naked, spiritual meaning, carries to Hebrews the idea of a re- 
ligious separation, it is very evident what mode it would suggest, should 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 225 

they permit their minds to advert to mode. Their separations were by 
sprinklings. The remaining passage (Eph* iv : 5) could only have been 
supposed to teach the essential necessity of observing water baptism in 
only one mode, by a mind insensible to the elevation and sacredness of 
the passage. It is the glorious spiritual unity between Christians and 
their Divine Head, resulting from the separating consecration which 
baptism represents* 

X. Baptism is Purification. — The identification of baptism with 
the purifications of the Jews, in Jno. iii : 26, 25, throws some light upon 
its mode. The question about purifying, agitated between the Jews 
and some of the Baptist's disciples (v. 25), is evidently the question 
which they propound to John himself (in v. 26), viz. : What was the 
meaning of Christ's baptizing, The whole tenour of John's answer 
proves this, for it is all addressed to the explanation of this poiut ; why 
Christ, baptized by him, and thus seemingly his disciple, should admin- 
ister a baptism independent of him. Any other explanation leaves an 
absurd chasm between verses 25 and 26. Baptism, then, is katha- 
rismos, a striking testimony to the correctness of our account of its sig- 
nification, a matter which we found to bear, in so important a way* 
upon its mode. But farther : Let any one consider the Septuagint use 
of this .word, and he cannot easily remain in doubt as to the mode in 
which a Jew would naturally administer it. 

XL Mode of New Testament Baptism.— My time will not permit 
me to go into a full discussion of the actual mode indicated by the sacred 
historian in each case of baptism in the New Testament. Such detail 
is, indeed^ not necessary, inasmuch as you may find the work well done 
in several of your authors, and especially in Armstrong, Part II, cln 
3, 4. The result of a thorough examination was well stated by a divine 
of our Church thus s Rule three columns on your blank papery mark 
the first, « Certainly by immersion; the second, ' Probably by immersion ; 
the third, ' Certainly not by immersion.' Then, after the careful study 
of the Greek Testament, enter each case where it properly belongs. 
Under the first head there will be not a single instance ; under the sec- 
ond, there may be a few ; while the larger number will be under the 
third. Immersionists, when they read that John was baptizing in Jor- 
dan, and again at iEnon, " because there was much water there," con- 
clude that he certainly immersed his penitents. But when we note that 
the language may as well be construed 'at' Jordan, and that the 
"many waters '* of Mnon were only a cluster of springs; considering 
-also the unlikeliness of one man's performing such a multitude of im- 
mersions, and the uninspired testimony of the early Church as to the 
method of our Saviour's baptism, the probabilities are all turned the 
other way, So the improbability of sufficient access to water, at Pen- 
tecost, and the impossibility of twelve men's immersing three thousand 
in one afternoon, make the immersion of the Pentecostal converts out of 
the question. This is the conclusion of the learned Dr. Edward Ro- 
binson, after an inquiry en the spot. In like manner, the Eunuch's 
baptism may possibly have been by dipping, but was more probably by 
affusion ; while the cases of Paul, Cornelius, and the jailer, were cer- 
tainly in the latter mode. 

XII. See T. Earnest, p. 137. 

XIIL Patristic Testimony as to Mode djscusseb.— Your acquain- 



226 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

tance with Church history has taught you the tenour of the usual represent 
tations of the antiquaries touching the mode of baptism in the patristic 
churches. The usual version is, that in the second and third centuries 
the usual mode of baptism was by a trine immersion, accompanied with 
a number of superstitious rites, of crossing, anointing, laying on hands, 
tasting honey and salt, clothing in a white garment, exorcism, &c. There 
are several reasons why we do not consider this testimony of any im- 
portance. 

First, the New Testament mode was evidently different, in most 
cases at least \ and we do not feel bound by mere human authority, 
(even though within a hundred and fifty years of the Apostles, a lapse 
of time within which great apostacies have often been matured.) Sec- 
ond, we do not see how Immersionists can consistently claim this pa-* 
tristic precedent for dipping as of authority, and refuse authority to 
all their other precedents for the human fooleries which so uniformly 
attended their baptisms. And farther,, the many other corruptions of 
doctrine and government which were at the same time spread in the 
Church, prove the fathers to be wretched examples for the New Testa- 
ment religion. Third, the usage was not as uniformly by immersion, 
as the antiquaries usually say. Thus, Cyprian teaches us, (among 
many others,) that clinic baptism was usually by pouring or sprinkling, 
in the third century 5 yet it was never regarded as therefore less valid < 
and that father speaks, with a tone nigh akin to contempt, of the notion 
that its virtue was any less, because less water was used. Again, Dr. 
Robinson teaches us that the early baptisms could not have uniformly 
been by immersion ; because some baptismal urns of stone are still 
preserved, entirely too small to receive the applicant's whole person. 
And several monumental remains of great authenticity and antiquity 
show us baptisms actually by affusion, as that of the Emperor Con- 
stantine. Again, Mr. Taylor, in his Apostolic Baptism, shows us very 
strong reasons to believe that the immersion of the whole body was 
not the sacrament of baptism, but a human addition and preliminary 
thereto. For instance, the connexion of deaconesses with the baptiz- 
ing of women, mentioned by not a few, is thus explained 2 That an 
immersion and actual washing in puvis natziralibus, being supposed es- 
sential before baptism, the young women to be baptized were taken 
into the part of the baptistery where the pool was, and there, with 
closed doors, washed by the deaconesses; for no male clergyman could 
assist here, compatibly with decency. And that after this, the candi- 
dates being dressed in their white garments, were presented to the pres- 
byter, at the door of the Church, and received the actual baptism, by 
affusion from him. This view of the distinction between the washing 
and the sacrament is also supported by what modern travellers observe, 
concerning the rite among some of the old, petrified, Oriental Churches, 

These remarks are designed not for a full discussion ; but to suggest 
the topics for your examination, 

B.RCAPITULATION — In conclusion of the subject of the Mode of Bap- 
tism let us review the positions successively established in a somewhat 
complicated discussion, 

I. Having pointed out the superior importance of Hebraistic Greek 
usage, over the Classic in determining this question, we separate the 
Tasage of the family of words expressing baptism into two questions, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 227 

their meaning when expressive of common, secular washings, in either 
Classic or Hebraistic Greek, and their meaning when expressive of reli- 
gious, or ritual washings. 

II. We show that all common words applied to describe religious 
rituals, ipso facto, undergo some modification of signification. And 
hence, even if it could be shown that the family of words always mean 
nothing but dip, in common secular washings, it would not be therefore 
proved of baptism. But 

III. The family of words do not always mean exclusive dipping, 
either in Classic or Hebraistic Greek, when expressive of common 
washings. 

IV. Nor do they mean exclusive dipping, when applied to describe 
religious rituals other than the Sacrament of Baptism, either in the Old 
Testament Greek, or in Josephus, or in the New Testament. 

V. Nor, to come still nearer, is its proper sacramental meaning in 
the New Testament exclusive dipping, as we prove, by its symbolical 
meaning: From the analogy of figurative baptisms ; From the actual 
attendant circumstances of the instances of the sacrament in the New 
Testament ; And from the absurd consequences of the dogma. I com- 
mend Fairchild on Baptism, as a manual of this discussion remarkably 
compact, perspicuous, and comprehensive. I regard it as eminently 
adapted to circulation among our pastoral charges. 



LECTURE LXIIL 



SYLLABUS. 

SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM. 

1. Who are proper subjects of Christian Baptism, and on what terms ? 

John Edwards. Qualific. for Communion. Mason on the Church, Essay I. 
Neander. Ch. Hist, on the Novation and Donatist Schisms. 

2. Meet the objection, that the nature of Baptism renders it necessarily inap- 
propriate to infants, because they cannot believe. Review of Th. Ernest. 

Dr. L. "Woods' Lect. Ill, and 117, or Woods on Infant Baptism. Fairchild 
on Baptism, Armstrong on do. Pt. Ill, ch, 3. Ridgeley. Qu. 165. Note. 
Calv. B. IV, c, 1G. 

3. Argue infant-baptism from infant church-membership. 

Mason on the Church. Essays 2-4. Woods' Lect. Ill, 112. Armstrong, 
Pt. Ill, ch. 4, 5. Calvin, Bk. IV, ch. 16. Turrettiu, Loc. xix, Qu. 20. 
Ridgeley, Qu. 166. 

4. What would have been the natural objections raised by the Jews, to Chris- 
tianity, had it excluded infants ? 

Masou on the Church. Essay V. 

5. State the argument for mtant-baptisni ironi the Great Commission. Matt, 
xxviii : 19, 20 ; Mark svi : 15, 16 ; Luke xxiv ; 47, &c. 

Armstrong, Pt. ill, ch. 2, and 6, Woods' Lect, 113, &c. 



228 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

I. Believing Adults to be baptized. — All adults who make an 
intelligent and credible profession of faith on Jesus Christ are to be 
baptized on their own application ; and no other adults. The evidence 
of the last assertion is in Acts ii : 41, 47 ; x : 47, with xi : 15, 16, and 
viii : 12 and 37. The genuineness of the last text is indeed grievously 
questioned by the critical editors, except Knapp ; but even if spurious, 
its early and general introduction gives us an information of the clear 
conviction of the Church on this subject. Last : the truths signified by 
baptism, are such that it is obviously inappropriate to all adults but 
those who are true believers, in the judgment of charity. 

What children may be baptized? — We add that baptism is also 
to be administered to "the infants of one or both believing parents." 
(Conf. 28, § 4.) The great question here raised will be the main sub- 
ject of this and a subsequent lecture. But a related question is still 
agitated among Psedobaptists themselves, whether one or both of the 
parents must be believers, or only decent baptized members of the 
Church. Papists baptize the children of all baptized persons, and 
Episcopalians, Methodists, and not a few of the Presbyterian family of 
Churches, baptize those of all decent baptized persons. They plead 
the Church-membership of the parents, the example of the Jewish 
Church as to circumcision, and a kindly, liberal policy as to parents 
and infants. We object ; first the express language of our Standards, 
Confession of Faith xxviii : 4 ; Larger Catechism, question 166. " In- 
fants of one or both believing parents," "professing faith in Christ, and 
obedience to Him." Second : The language of 1 Cor. i : 14, where it is 
not the baptized, but the "believing'" parent, who sanctifies the unbe- 
lieving. Third : Those baptized, but unbelieving parents are Church- 
members, subject to its guardianship and discipline ; but they are not 
full members. They are ecclesiastical minors, cut off by their own 
guilty lack of spiritual qualification from all the spiritual privileges, 
and sealing ordinances. Fourth : Chiefly because it is preposterous that 
those who make no consecration of their own souls to Christ, and do not 
pretend to govern themselves by His laws, should profess to consecrate 
the souls of their children, and rear them to God. If then, it be urged 
that the children ought not to be deprived of their ecclesiastical privi- 
lege, because of the impenitence of the parents ; I reply. Perfectly 
true : There is a great and cruel wrong committed on the little ones. 
But it is their own parents who commit it : not the Church authorities. 
They cannot repair that wrong, by giving them the shell of a sacrament 
which their parent's unbelief makes perfectly empty. This is no reme- 
dy ; and it only violates Scripture, and introduces disorder. This will 
be greatly strengthened, when we show that Infant Baptism is a sacra- 
ment to the parents also. 

Under the old Covenant the children of all circumcised persons were 
circumcised 1 True. But St. Paul has changed it; because, as we sur- 
mise, ours is a more spiritual dispensation, no state-Church separation 
exists from the world ; and all unbelievers arc spiritually "aliens." 

Under the Jewish Church the children of mixed marriages were out 
of the Church, until they came in through the gate of proselytism. 
Neh. xiii : 23-28. But under the New Testament, if one parent is a 
credible believer, the child is within the Covenaut. Our grounds are 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 229 

1 Cor. vii : 14, and the circumcision and baptism of Timothy. Acts 
xvi : 3. 

II. Immersionists object ; Infants cannot Believe. — Before we 
proceed to the main point of debate, it will be well to remove out of 
the way the objection on which Immersionists place the main reliance. 
They urge that since infants cannot exercise the graces signified and 
sealed in baptism, (see Catechism, question 94), it is useless and pre- 
posterous to administer it to babes. Take, say they, Mark xvi • 15, 16, 
as a specimen of the many passages in which it is categorically said, or 
clearly implied, that one must believe, before it is proper to baptize him. 
Hence the administration of the rite to infants is a practical falsehood, 
and if unauthorized by God, even profane. What, they ask, can all 
your inferential arguments for infant Church-membership be worth, 
when the express words of Scripture prove that infants cannot have the 
necessary qualifications for baptism 1 

Answers. — We reply, this plausible statement proceeds on the usual 
fallacy of taking the speaker's words in a sense in which he did not 
mean them to be applied. In Mark xvi : 16, for instance, Christ was 
not speaking either of the terms of infant salvation, or of the terms on 
which they could become Church members. Let the reader remember 
that the temporary commission to the apostles and seventy (Matt, x: 
5) had already made them familiar with the fact that Christ's dispen- 
sation was to be preached to Jews. But now, in Mark xvi : 15, it is 
extended to " all the world," and to " every creature." These were 
the features of the new commission prominent to our Saviour's mind, 
and the disciples' attention. The terms on which Jewish families 
should be admitted were already familiar. The question was, how 
shall those be admitted who are now aliens? Why, on their faith. 
The evidence that infants were not here intended to be excluded from 
baptism by our Saviour's scope is absolutely demonstrative ; for the 
immersionist interpretation would equally make the passage prove that 
infants can neither be baptized, nor be suved, because they are incapa- 
ble of faith ; and it would equally make it prove that the salvation of 
infants is dependent en their baptism ! We may find many other illus- 
trations of the absurdity of such interpretations; as, for instance, in 2 
Thess: iii : 10: "If any one (ei tis) will not work, neither shall he 
eat." A similar reasoning would prove that infants should be starved. 

Infants can be in the Covenant, so may have its Seals. — Fur- 
ther : it does not follow that because infants canuot, exercise intelligent 
graces, therefore there is no sense nor reason in administering to them 
sacraments significant thereof. Infants are capable of redemption. 
Glorious truth ! Why, then, should it appear a thing incredible that 
they should partake of the sacraments of redemption 1 Baptism signi- 
fies God's covenant with souls, as well as their covenant with Him. 
Can there be no meaning in a pledge of God's covenant favour applied 
to an infant, because the infant does not yet apprehend it '? No sense 
at all ; because it has no sense to him 1 Straage reasoning ! But hu- 
man suppositions are a bad test of what God may or may not think 
reasonable. To the Word and the Testimony! There we find two 
cases in which religious ordinances were applied to "unconscious 
babes." In Matt, xix : 14, Mark x : 14, Luke xviii: 1G, our Saviour 
took up little children (brephe) into His arms, and blessed them, be- 



230 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

cause they were Church members. Did they comprehend the blessing? 
The other case is that of circumcision, and it is peculiarly strong, be- 
cause it was emblematic of the same spiritual exercises and graces now 
signified by baptism. See Eom. ii : 28, 29, iv : ll ; Col. ii : ll ; Deut. 
xxx : 6, x : 1 6 ; Phil, iii : 3. Yet circumcision was, by God's command, 
applied to all the infant males of God's people! Let the immersionist, 
therefore, go and turn all the confident denunciation and fiery invec- 
tive against " baby sprinkling," against this parallel ordinance of God. 
We entrench ourselves behind it. 

The Sacrament Embraces the Parents. — Once more: So far as 
the child himself is concerned, there is no absurdity in giving him the 
seal in advance of his fulfilment of the conditions. Are not seals often 
appended to promissory covenants ? Yea, every covenant is in its na- 
ture promissory, including something to be done, as a condition of the 
bestowment. This is so of adult baptism. But, they say, the adult can 
be a party ; infants not. Answer ; parents are, and the efficacy of the 
parental relation, properly sanctified, is regular enough to justify this 
arrangement. Where, then, is the practical objection, so far as the in- 
fant's own subsequent edification is concerned, of his receiving the seal 
beforehand, so that he may ever after have the knowledge of that fact, 
with all its solemn meaning, and see it re-enacted in every infant bap- 
tism he afterward witnesses ? But, above all, remember that the infant 
is not the only party, on man's side, to the sacrament. Infant baptism 
is a sacrament to the parent, as well as the child. It consecrates the 
relation of filiation, or parentage, and thus touches both the parties to 
that relation equally. The parent has momentous duties to perform, 
for God's glory ; and momentous religious responsibilities, as to the 
soul of the child, which duties are also represented and pledged in this 
sacrament, as well as God's promised aid and blessing in their per- 
formance. Infant baptism is a sacrament to the parent as much as to 
the child. Now, whatever of warning, instruction, comfort, edification, 
the sacrament was intended to convey to the parent, to fit him better 
for his charge as the educator of the child for eternity: when should 
the parent receive that equipment ? When does the moral education 
of the infant's soul begin? It begins just so soon as the formation of 
habit begins ; so soon as petulance, anger, selfishness, can be exhibited 
by an infant; so soon as it can apprehend the light of a mother's smils 
beaming upon it as it hangs upon her breast; as soon as it can know to 
tremble at her frown. Here, then, is the great practical reason, which 
makes God's wisdom clear even to man's reason, in instituting the seal 
of Church-membership at the dawn of life. 

III. Argument from Infant Membership in Old Testament and 
New — Major Premise. — We proceed now to advance t'he positive evi- 
dences for infant baptism. Of these, the most solid and comprehensive 
is that from infant Church-membership in the jNew Testament Church. 
The major premise of our argument is, that baptism is, in all cases, the 
proper rite by which to recognize membership in the visible Church. 
The minor premise is, the infants of believing parents are members of 
the visible Church of Christ. Hence, the conclusion : such infants are 
proper subjects of baptism. 

On the major premise there will probably be little dispute between 



OE LECTURES m THEOLOGY, 231 

lis and immersionists. In the great commission, we are taught that 
discipleship is formally constituted by baptism (Matt, xxviii i 19). In 
Acts ii ; 41, language is used -which plainly shows that the baptism of 
the three thousand was equivalent to their being added to the Churchy 
In 1 Cor. sii s 18, the spiritual engrafting of true believers by the 
Holy Ghost into the spiritual body of Christ, the invisible Chui-ch, is 
called a baptism ; in evident allusion to the effect of that rite in intro- 
ducing to the visible Church, 

Minor Premise. Church formed under Abraham.— The minor 1 
premise leads us to consider the origin and constitution of the Church* 
Having formed in the Old Testament a visible Church state, called 
Kahal) and Heydah, and characterized by every mark of a Church, we 
traee that society up the stream of sacred history, until we find its in- 
stitution (or re-institution) in the family of Abraham, and in that gos- 
pel and ecclesiastical covenant ratified with him in Genesis, ch. xvii, 
The patriarchal form was most naturally superinduced on this Church 
then, because it was the only organized form, with which man had 
hitherto been familiar, and the one best sttited to that state of the 
world. The society there organized was set apart to the service and 
Worship of God. It was organized under ecclesiastical rulers. It had 
the Word and gospel of God. It had its sacrament and other sacred 
rites, No one will dispute the continuity of this society under Moses 
and his successors; for the covenant of Horeb manifestly developed^ 
it did not destroy, the body. 

The same under New Testament. — 'But can the same thing be 
said of the visible Church catholic which has existed since Christ, un- 
der the organization given it by the Apostles 1 The Reformed Churches 
answer, Yes, This is substantially the same with the Church of the 
Old Testament. The change of dispensation is the change of outward 
form, not of its substance or nature. This is proved,* a.) By the 
fact that the repeal of God's Church-cot enant with Abraham and his 
family is nowhere stated. The abrogation of the Mosaic economy does 
not destroy the old body, because that economy did not introduce it. 
The law, which Was four hundred and thirty years after, could not 
disannull the covenant made with Abraham. Gal, iii ) 17. 

Apostles develope, not destroy it.— i a.) The Apostles and Christy 
by their acts and sayings, recognize the existence of a visible Church, 
Which they do not abolish, but reform, and increase, Observe in how 
many instances particular churches were but synagogues Christianized, 
Consider also, how those traits of order and ritual which are distinc- 
tive of the new dispensation, were made to overlap those which marked 
the old, The substitution of the former for the latter was gradual, 
St. Paul observed the passover after he began to keep the Lord's sup- 
per ; he circumcised Timothy after he began to baptize gentiles. There 
is no sudden cutting off of the old, but a gradual "splicing" of the 
new on it. 

Gentiles formed it, — b.) The Apostle expressly teaches that Gen- 
tile converts, coming to Christ by faith, are under the terms of the 
Abrahamic covenant. Therefore that covenant is not abolished. They 
are ''the seed;" they are "children of Abraham." They are "the 
true Israel." Rom. iv: 12—17; Matt, iii; 9; Gal. iii j 7. Indeed, 



232 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the "seed>" to whom the promises were made, never was, at any tirae^ 
strictly coincident with the lineal descendants of Abraham; Ishmael, 
Keturah's children, Esau, though circumcised, were no part of it. 
Every heathen proselyte was, See G-en. xvii : 12, 13 ; Exod. xii t 48; 
Deut. xxiii i 8. Gentiles were always, as truly (not as numerously) as 
now, a part of this seed. 

Promises to it only fulfilled undEr New Testament. — ; c.) The 
correlative promises that "all nations should be blessed in Abraham, 
and that he should be "Father of many nations," were only fulfilled as 
the gentiles were made members of the Abrabamic body. See Rom s 
iv : 16, 17. It cannot be said that Abraham's paternity of the twelve 
tribes exhausted that promise, for Israel was but one nation. If, then, 
the Abrahamic Church expired before the gentiles were brought in;, 
this promise was never fulfilled. It will not help the cause to say that 
Abraham was father of these believers, in the sense of being their first 
exemplar. He was not, Noah, Enoch, Abel, probably Adam, were 
before him t The relationship is that of the head and founder of an 
organization, to the subsequent members of It* Nor will it be saidj 
that the gentiles becoming 'Abraham's seed' only means their admis-* 
sion into the invisible Church, into which Abraham's faith admitted 
him. This is 5 indeed, a higher sequel to the privilege^ as to all true 
believers, but not the whole of it. We have proved that the Covenant 
was not purely spiritual, but also an ecclesiastical, visible Church cov- 
enant; Therefore the seed, or children of the covenant (see Acts iii J 
25) are also thereby brought into the visible Church relationship. 

d.) The number of Old Testament promises to the visible Church, 
some of which were unfulfilled at the end of the old dispensation, must 
imply that the community is still in existence to receive their fulfil- 
ment. Otherwise God has failed,. See 5 then, Isa. ii : 2, 3, liv ; 1-5$ 
xlix : 14-^23 ; Ps. ii : 6? 8. It cannot be said that the invisible Church 
is the sole object of these promises. 

Rom. xi : 17, &c.-^-e.) Last. The figure of Rom. xi : 17 to 24th 
plainly implies that the Old Testament visible Church is continued un- 
der the new dispensation. The good olive tree is not uprooted, but 
pruned, and new branches grafted in. And at last, the excinded 
branches are to be regrafted "into their own olive tree." The argu- 
ment is too clear and strong to need many words. 

Inference. Confirmed by all PROviDEtfcES.-^ThuS} our minof 
premise is established. The ecclesiastical covenant made with Abra- 
ham still subsists unrepealed, and all Christians are brought under iti 
As children were members of that covenantjthe inference is irresistible 
that they are members still, unless their positive exclusion can be 
pointed out in the New Testament,, This inference is also greatly for- 
tified, by showing that all God's general dispensations towards the hu- 
man family have embraced the children along with the parents. In the 
Covenant of works with Adam : In the curse for its breach : In the 
covenant with Noah : In the curse on Sodom : In the doom of the Ca- 
naanites, and x\malekites : In the constitution of society and course of 
Providence in all ages ; In the political commonwealths ordained by 
Him : In all these, the infant children go with the parents. Were the 
visible Church different} it would be a strange anomaly. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 233 

Again: Malachi tells u3 (ii : 15) that God's object in constituting 
the marriage relation and family as it is, was " to seek a godly seed ;" 
i. e., to provide for the Christian rearing of the offspring. Now, this 
is the Church's object. Would it not be strange if the visible Church 
failed to embrace and consecrate the family institutions as a subdi- 
vision of itself 1 Third: The affection, authority, and influence of pa- 
rents are so unique, that when we properly consider them, it seems in- 
credible God would have omitted them as parts of His Church instru- 
mentalities, subject to the sanctifying rules of His house. Parental 
love is the strongest of the instinctive affections, and the most God-like 
in its permanence, forbearance, and disinterestedness. Parental au- 
thority is the most remarkable and absolute one delegated by God to 
man over his fellow man. Consider : it authorizes the parent to govern 
the child for a fourth of his life as a slave; to decide virtually his in- 
telligence, culture, and social destiny, and even to elect for him a char- 
acter and religious creed: thus seeming almost to infringe the inalien- 
able responsibilities and liberties of the immortal soul ! And last : the 
parental influence is so efficacious, especially in things moral and reli- 
gious, that it does more than all others to decide the child's everlast- 
ing fate. Can it be that God would omit such a lever as this, in con- 
structing His Church, as the organism for man's moral and religious 
welfare. Fourth: The Church-membership of children seems to be 
implied in that duty which all right-minded Christians instinctively ex- 
ercise, of caring for the welfare and salvation of the children of the 
brotherhood. Fifth : It follows from the declared identity of circum- 
cision and baptism, and from many express Scriptures. See Col. ii: 
11, .2, 13 ; Matt, xix : 13-15 ; Acts ii : 38, 39 ; 1 Cor. vii ; 14. The 
Church membership of infants having been thus established, the pro- 
priety of their baptism follows. Indeed, immersionists virtually admit 
that if the second premise is true, the conclusion must follow, by de- 
nying the Church-membership of infants under the New Testament. 

Visible Church in Old Testament denied by Immersionists. 
Answer. — Many evasions of this argument are attempted. Immer- 
sionists deny that there was any visible Church Sate appointed for 
saints in the Old Testament ! This is a striking, and at once a mourn- 
ful proof of the stringency of my argument, that a body of evangeli- 
cal Christians, claiming especial scripturalness and orthodoxy, should 
be forced, in resisting it, to adopt one of the most monstrous asser- 
tions of those flagrant heretics and fanatics, the Anabaptists. You 
have only to notice how expressly it contradicts the. Scriptures, Acts 
vii : 38, Rom. xi : 24, Heb. iii : 5, 6 : How it defies the plainest facts of 
the Old Testament history, which shows us God giving His people 
every possible feature of a visible Church state ; gospel, ministry, sacra- 
meuts, other ordinances, Sabbath, discipline, sanctuaries, &c. : How 
ntterly it confounds all relations between the old and new dispensa- 
tions : And how preposterously it represents Christ's own personal life, 
observances, and obedience, including especially His baptism by John, 
an Old Testament prophet, administering his rite in this Old Testa- 
ment No-church, which rite is, according to immersionists, still the 
Christian sacrament ! 

Objected that the Argument proves too much — Answer. — 
Some of them assert that the argument, if good for anything, would 



234 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

equally make all adult unbelieving children of believing parents, and 
all unbelieving domestic slaves, Church members. Is no force to be 
allowed to the passing away of the patriarchal state, with the almost 
absolute authority of the father 1 None to the growing spirituality of 
the New Covenant 1 None to the express change in these features by 
apostolic authority, as is manifested in their precedents ? Still, all 
that could be made of this argument would be to prove, not that the 
reasoning of Paedobaptists is unsound, but that their conduct may be 
inconsistent. 

Sometimes it is objected that if infants were really made members 
of the visible Church, then, as they grow up, they must be admitted, 
without question, to all the privileges of membership, to suffrage, to 
office, to the Lord's supper. I reply that there is no commonwealth on 
earth, where mere citizenship entitles to all the higher franchises. In 
the State, all citizens are entitled to protection, and subject to jurisdic- 
tion. But all cannot vote and bear office. Christ's ecclesiastical com- 
monwealth is a school, a place for teaching and training. To be a mem- 
ber of the school does not at once imply that one must share ail its 
powers and privileges. The scholars are promoted according to their 
qualifications. 

Peter, &c, "Chosen out of the World." — It is objected by some : 
If Peter and his brethren were in the visible Church, how comes it that 
Christ says to them : " I have chosen you out of the world V Jno. xv : 
19. I answer : Cannot that which is worldly, in the true sense, be in 
the visible Church'? The objection begs the question. The very point 
in debate is, whether the Anabaptist definition of the visible Church, 
as a body containing only regenerate persons, is true. The Bible says 
that it is not : that Peter was yet worldly, while regularly in the visi- 
ble Church, and was, out of that state chosen by Christ to the apostle- 
ship, and to effectual calling. 

Why were Jews baptized if in the Church? — One more ob- 
jection may be noted: If the visible Church of the Old and New Tes- 
taments is one, then circumcision and baptism are alike the initiatory 
rites. How came it then, that Jews, already regularly in it, were re- 
admitted by baptism 1 I reply first. It is not so certain that they were. 
Note that we do not believe John's baptism to have been the Christian 
sacrament. But who can prove that the Twelve, and the Seventy were 
ever baptized again 1 As for the Jews after Pentecost, who certainly 
did receive Christian baptism, they were now, (after Christ's definite 
rejection, crucifixion, and ascension) "broken off for their unbelief;" 
and needed readmittance on their repentance. But second, where is the 
anomaly of re-administering the initiatory rite to members already in 
the Society, at the season of the marked change of outward form, when 
it was receiving a large class of new members. I see nothing strange 
in the fact, that the old citizens took their oath of allegiance over again, 
along with the new. 

IV. No New Testament Warrant required. — Immersionists de- 
light to urge, that as baptism is a positive institution, no Protestant 
should administer it to infants, because the New Testament contains 
no explicit warrant for doing so. I shall show that the tables can be 
turned on this point. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 235 

Burden of disproof on the Immersionists. — When a society un- 
dergoes important modifications, its substantial identity yet remaining, 
the fair presumption is that all those things are intended to remain 
unchanged, about the change of which nothing is said. We may illus- 
trate from citizenship in a Commonwealth changing its constitution. 
So, if there were not one word in all the New Testament, indicating 
the continuance of infant Church-membership, the silence of Scripture 
constitutes no disproof ; and the burden of proof would rest on the Im- 
mersionist. And this burden he would have to assume against every 
antecedent probability. True, the cessation of the Mosaic dispensation 
was accompanied with great changes ; but infant membership and cir- 
cumcision never were merely Mosaic. We may say of them, as of the 
Covenant to which they belonged, as St. Paul says iu Q-al. iii : 17. All 
that was typical passed away, because of the coming of the Antitype : 
circumcision and infant membership never were types. Again, infant 
membership was esteemed by Jews a privilege. We understand that 
the new dispensation is an extension of the old one, more liberal in its 
provisions, and its grace : and embracing the whole human family. It 
would be a strange thing indeed, if this era of new liberality and breadth 
were the occasion for a new and vast restriction, excluding a large class 
of the human family, in whom the pious heart is most tenderly inter- 
ested. Consider this in the light of the Apostle's language: E. Gr., in 
Rom. xi : 20 ; Acts iii : 23. In these and similar passages, the Jews 
are warned that unbelief of Christ, the great closing Prophet of the 
line, (like resistance of previous Theoratic Messengers,) will be accom- 
panied with loss of their church membership. According to Immer- 
sionists, the meaning of this warning would be : "Oh, Jew; if you be- 
lieve not on Jesus Christ, you (and your children) forfeit your much 
valued visible Church membership. But if you believe on Him, then 
your innocent children shall be punished for your obedience, by losing 
their privileges !" 

What New Testament warrant for close Communion, &c. — 
Further, no immersionist is consistent, in demanding an express New 
Testament warrant in words, for all his ordinances. There is not an 
intelligent Protestant in the world, who does not hold that what follows 
from the express Word "by good and necessary consequence," is bind- 
ing, as well as the Word itself. What other warrant have Immersion- 
ists for observing the Lord's day as a Christian Sabbath, and neglect- 
ing the seventh day 1 What warrant for admitting females to the Lord's 
table 1 What warrant for their favourite usage of strict communion ? 
This, pre-eminently, is only a deduction. 

No CLAMOUR, SUCH AS MUST HAVE ARISEN AT EXCLUSION OF INFANTS. 

The presumption against the Immersionist is greatly strengthened 
again, in my view, by the extreme improbability that the sweeping 
revolution against infant Church membership could have been estab- 
lished by the Apostles, without some such clamour as would have been 
mentioned in the New Testament. We must remember that all He- 
brews greatly prized their ecclesiastical birth. See Matt, iii : 9 ; John 
viii : 33. To be cut off from among his People, was to the Jew, a 
shameful and dreaded degradation. The uncircumcised was a Dog to 
him, unclean and despised. We have evidence enough that the be- 
lieving Hebrews shared these feelings. Hence, when we see that even 



236 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

believers among them were so suspicious, and the unbelievers full of 
rampant jealousy, and eager to object and revile the Nazarenes, how is 
it possible that this great abrogation of privilege could be established, 
while we hear none of that clamour which, the New Testament tells us, 
was provoked by the cessation of sacrifice, purifications, and circum- 
cision 1 

That no such clamor argued. — But the Immersionist may rejoin: 
such a clamour may have existed, and it may be omitted in the sacred 
history; because the history is brief, and the purposes of inspiration 
may not have required its notice. One is not entitled to argue from 
the absence of proof. De omni ignoio quasi de non ex istentibus. 

I reply: we are not arguing herein from the mere absence of proof; 
for we give high probable evidence to show that if the fact had ever 
occurred, the traces of it must have been preserved. First : Not only 
is there a dead silence in the brief narrative of Scripture concerning 
any objection of Jews, such as must have been made had infant mem- 
bership been abrogated ; but there seems to be an equal silence in the 
Kabbinieal literature against Christianity, and in the voluminous po- 
lemical works, from the days of Justin Martyn Adversus, Tryphonom, 
down. Second : The objections, restiveness. and attacks growing out 
of the revolutionizing of other things, less important than infant mem- 
bership, required and received full notice in the New Testament. 
Look for instance, at the Epistle to the Hebrews, written practically 
with this main object ; to obviate the restiveness and tendency to revolt 
produced among Jewish Christians, by the abrogation of cherished cus- 
toms. The main line of argument is to show that these innovations are 
justifiable, and scriptural : yet there is not one word to excuse this mo- 
mentous innovation against infant membership ! Third : The sacred 
narrative, in Acts 15th, approaches so near the topic of this innovation, 
that it is simply incredible an allusion to it should have been avoided, 
had the revolution been attempted. The question which agitated the 
whole Christian community to its core was: shall Gentile converts en- 
tering the Church under the new dispensation be required to be cir- 
cumcised, and keep the ceremonial law 1 The very arguments by which 
this question was debated are given. Now how inevitable would it 
have been, had the change in membership been made, which the Im- 
mersionist supposes, to say : "Whether you circumcise adult Gentile 
converts, or not ; you cannot circumcise their children : because Jewish 
children and Gentile, are no longer admitted with their parents. But 
there is no whisper of tbis point raised. I cannot believe the innova- 
tion had been attempted. But if it had not been made at that stage, 
it was never made at all by divine authority ; for the Immersionist pro- 
fesses to find it in Christ's commission at his ascension. 

V. Great Commission implies pjedo-baptism. — Paidobaptist wri- 
ters are accustomed to attach importance to that great Commission. 
See Matt, xxviii : 19, 20 ; Mark xvi : 15, 16 ; Luke xxiv : 47-49. As 
we have already considered the supposed evidence for exclusive be- 
liever's baptism in Mark xvi : 16, we may take the language of Matthew 
as most explicit and full, of the three places. We consider that the 
Apostles would naturally have understood such a commission to include 
infants, for the following reasons: 

The first thing told them is to go, and "teach" more properly, "disci- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 237 

pie" (matheteusate) all nations. Here, says the Immersionist, is strong 
evidence that only believer's baptism is enjoined, because they are to 
be taught first, and then baptized ; whereas infants cannot be taught. 
The argument is unfortunately founded only on a failure to examine 
the original. For this turns it against the Immersionist. The term 
"disciple" is eminently appropriate to the conception of a school of 
Christ, which is one of the Bible conceptions of the Church. See Gen. 
xviii : 19; Deut. vi : 7 ; Is. ii : 8, &c. The young chi)d is entered or 
enrolled at this school, before bis religious education begins, in order 
that he may learn afterwards. Matt, xxviii : 20. 

Second : what would a mind free from immersionist preconceptions 
naturally understand by the command to "disciple nil nations?" Does 
not this include the infant children, as a part thereof? But we must 
remember that the minds of the disciples were not only free from these 
prejudices, but accustomed to the Church membership of infants. They 
had known nothing else but a church state in which the children went 
along with their parents. It seems then, that they would almost inevi- 
tably understand such a command, as including the authority to bap- 
tize infants, unless instructed to the contrary. Nor is this all : these 
disciples were accustomed to see cases of discipleship to Judaism occur- 
ring from time to time. Proselytes were not unusual. See Matt, xxiii : 
15 ; Acts vi : 5 ; ii : 10 ; xiii : 43, and the uniform custom was to circum- 
cise the children and receive them into the Jewish comnfunity, on the 
profession of the father. So that, if we set aside for the present, the 
question whether proselyte baptism was as yet practiced.it is clear the 
Apostles must be led by all they had been accustomed to witness, to 
suppose that their converts were to bring in their children along with 
them; unless the notion were contradicted by Christ. Where is the 
contradiction of it 1 



LECTUKE LXIV. 



SYLLABUS. 
SUBJECTS OP BAPTISM-(Concluded.) 

6. "What weight is to be attached to the prevalence of Proselyte Baptism 
among the Jews, as evidence for infant baptism ? 

See Dr. L. Woods' Lectures. 112. Knapp's Christian Theol. § 138. "Wall's 
Hist. Infant Bapt. Jahn's Archaeology, § 325. 

7. State the argument for infant baptism from the baptism of houses. 
Armstrong, Pt. Ill, Ch. 8. Dr. Woods' Lect. 114. Taylor's Apostol. Bapt. 
pp. 28 to 68. 

8. Argue infant baptism from the titles and treatment addressed to Christian 
children in the New Testament. 



238 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

See Armstrong, Pt. Ill, Ch. 7. Woods' Lect. 115, Pt. 1, Taylor, Apost. 
Bapt. p. 100-112. 

9. What historical evidence can be given for the prevalence of infant baptism 
from the Apostles' days downward? 

Woods' Lect. 116. Coleman, Ancient Christianity Exemplified, Ch. 19, 
§ 6. Bingham's Origines Sac* as. Wall's Hist. Inf. Bapt. 

10. Refute the objection that infant baptism corrupts the spirituality of the 
Church by introducing unsanctified members. 

Woods' Lectures, 117. Mason on the Church, Essays 6 and 7. 

11. What are the relations of baptized children to the Church, and what the 
practical benefits thereof? 

Drs. Woods and Mason, as above. 

VI. Argument from Proselyte Baptism of Jews. — It has been 
fashionable of late years for learned Psedobaptists (e. g., Dr. J. A. 
Alexander) to doubt whether the Jews practised proselyte family bap- 
tism as early as the Christian era ; because, they say, it was first as- 
serted in the Talmud (of 6th century), and these writers are unscrupu- 
lous. I see not why we may not in this case believe, because they are 
supported thus : (see Dr. Woods.) They uniformily assert the anti- 
quity of the usage. Usage is naturally deducible from Levitical puri- 
fications. It accounts for John's baptism being received with such fa- 
cility, while neither in the New Testament, nor in Josephus, is any 
surprise expressed at his baptizing a? a novelty. Jews certainly did 
practise proselyte baptism at a later day, and it can hardly be sup- 
posed that they borrowed it from the hated Christians. If they even 
did, it proves a prevalence of usage before they borrowed. Last: It 
does not seem very likely that such a pretence, if first invented in the 
Talmud, would have escaped denial by some earlier Christian or Jew- 
ish Christian. 

Now, if apostles were accustomed to see families baptized into Juda- 
ism, it was very likely that they would understand the command to go 
and proselyte all peoples to Christianity and baptize them, as includ- 
ing whole families. 

VII. Argument from Baptism of Houses. — Had the English ver- 
sion been accurate in the employment of the words house (oikos), 
household (oikia), our argument on this point would appear in it more 
just. According to the definition of Aristotle, and well-defined classic 
and Hebraistic usage, the word oikos means literally the apartments 
inhabited by the parents and children, and oikia literally the curti- 
lage. Figuratively, the former, the family ; the latter, the household. 
And the idea which constitutes the former a house is lineage. It is by 
birth of infants the house is built up ; so that the word may more natu- 
rally mean young children distinguished from parents than vice versa. 
A house is a cluster of one lineage, receiving accretion by birth and 
growth of children. So that when it is said in the New Testament 
that the oikos was baptized (never the okia), the presence of children 
is forcibly implied. This distinction in usage is always carefully ob- 
served in the New Testament as to the figurative sense of the two 
words, often as to the literal. E. g., Acts xvi : 31-34 (Greek) ; 1 Cor. 
i: 16, with xvi: 15; Phil, iv : 22. The argument is miserably ob- 
scured in the English version. Now, while some eight Christian houses 
are spoken of in the New Testament (who presumably were baptized 
houses), four such are explicitly mentioned as baptized. Cornelius', 
Acts x : 2, 44, 48 ; Lydia's, xvi : 15 ; the Philippian jailor's, xvi : 33 . 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 239 

Stephanas', 1 Cor. i: 16. Now, on the fact that among the very few 
separate individual baptisms mentioned in the New Testament four 
were of families, is ground of two-fold probability : 1, that there were 
young children in some of them, who were baptized on their parents' 
faith, that this sacramental recognition of the parental and family 
relation looks like Pcedobaptism amazingly. Immersionists don't use 
such language; so that even if it could be proved there probably were 
no young unconverted children, the argument remains. 

These Houses Included Children. — They say they can prove in 
each case there were none: Cornelius' by verses 2, 44. But see Gen. 
xviii ; 19 ; 2 Chron. xx : 13 ; Ezra viii : 21 ; Matt, xxi : 16, 15. That 
Lydia's house were all believing adult children, or servants, or appren- 
tices, they argue from Acts xvi : 40, " brethren." But see verses 14, 
15, nobody's faith is mentioned but Lydia's ; and doubtless Paul had 
made otber converts out of Lydia's house. The proof is, that the 
whole context shows the meeting in verse 40 was a public one, not a 
family one; and the Philippian church, a flourishing body, was now 
planted. 

That the jailor's family all believed is argued from verse 34. But 
the original places the panoiki, with rejoiced. That Stephanas' fam- 
ily were all baptized and believers, is argued from 1 Cor. xvi : 15. 
Answer : It was his oikia, not his oikos, which engaged in ministra- 
tions of Christian hospitality. 

VIII. Infants are Addressed as Church-Members. — An argument 
of equal, or perhaps greater importance is to be derived from the ad- 
dressing of the titles of Church-members to little children in the New 
Testament. That the words Hagioi, Pistos or Pisteuon, and Adelphos, 
are the current words employed to denote professed Christians, will not 
be denied. " Christians " is only used two or three times. The ad- 
dress of epistles to these titles is equivalent to their address to pro- 
fessed Church-members. Now, in three cases we find children ad- 
dressed in the epistles. Eph. vi ; 1-4 ; Col. iii : 20 ; 1 John ii ; 12, 13, 
teknia, paidia. First, these were not adult children, because yet to 
be reared. Nor in 1 Jno. ii : 12, spiritual children, for then we must 
make only spiritual fathers and young men. Now, when, in an epistle 
addressed to the Church we find certain Christian duties enjoined on 
young children, we infer they are of the Church, just as much as the 
parents, husbands, servants, masters, exhorted in the context. See 1 
Cor. v. 12. 

The Bishop's children must be members. — Further, in Titus i : 6, 
they are expressly called Tekna pista. Compare for illustration, in 1 
Tim. vi : 2, Pistous Despotas, and 1 Tim. iii : 4, parallel passage, 
where the Bishop's children being pista and upotekna, is equivalent 
to being well ruled, and in subjection. If the alternative be taken, 
that Titus' Tekna Pista mean adult children who are professors on 
their own behalf, of godliness, we are led into absurdities : for what 
must be decided of the man whose children are. yet small; and who 
being therefore in the prime of manhood, is fit to serve the Church ? 
Shall he wait, though otherwise fit, till it be seen whether his children 
will be converted? Or if the children be already come to ages of in- 
telligence, and not converted, in spite of the Father's good rearing, 



240 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

must he be refused ordination'? This would have excluded L. Rich- 
mond, Dr. G-ar. Spring, &c, &c. The obvious sense is, the bishop's 
children must be consecrated and reared accordingly. 

IX. Authorities on Patristic Baptism. Remarks. 1. Infant 
Baptism early mentioned. — As the historical evidence for the early 
and constant prevalence of infant baptism is so well unfolded in Cole- 
man, Woods, Bingham and Wall, and as your Church History enters 
fully into it, I shall not again detail the witnesses; but add some re- 
marks to sum up. And 1st, Bingham and Wall between them men- 
tion nine fathers, of the first and second centuries, who seem pretty 
clearly to allude to infant baptism ; some briefly and singly, others 
clearly and more than once. Now Mosheim's list of the genuine Fathers 
who wrote before A. D. 200, is only about 12 (Clement, Ignatius, Poly- 
carp, Pseudo Barnabas, Pastor Hermae, Ep. to Diognetus, (probably 
Justin's,) Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Theophylus of Anti- 
och, Clem. Alexandrinus, Tertulliau,) if we omit about 12 or 15 more, 
whose names and works are only made known to us by other Fathers 
who speak of them. And his list is nearly exhaustive. Now seeing 
that few of these works are voluminous, and that some are mere frag- 
ments: and seeing that if our theory of pEedo-baptism is correct, it was 
a subject which did not need much agitation, as being undisputed and 
of ancient establishment ; here is fully as much notice of it as was rea- 
sonably to be expected. After A. D. 200, the notices are abundant. 

Denial of it not mentioned of any heretics. — 2. The enumera- 
tions of heresies, and refutations of them drawn up by Irenaeus, Epiph- 
anius, Philastrius, Augustine, Theodoret, (Epiphanius for instance 
against 80 heresies,) contain no reference to any heretics who denied 
infant baptism, except those (as some Gnostic sects) who denied all 
baptism. And Peter de Bruys is said to be the first sectary who ever 
denied it. 

Not refused even by Pelagians, under the strongest induce" 
ment. — 3. In the controversy between Augustine and Pelagius, the 
latter were much pressed with the argument. If infants have neither 
depravity nor guilt, why baptize them 1 Their answer was, to gain for 
them heaven, instead of eternal life. They would have gladly given 
the more satisfactory answer, if it had been true, that infant baptism 
was an innovation. But they do not. Celestius, it is stated, repudiated 
the insinuation that his doctrine would lead to the denial of infant 
baptism, saying, he had never known any sect wicked enough for this. 
He and Pelagius were learned and travelled. 

Evidence in the Catacombs. — 4. In the Roman Catacombs, among 
the many interesting remains, are inscriptions over the graves of in- 
fants and young children, who are said to be baptized, and called 
"faithful," "believers," "brothers," while they are said to be of ages 
varying from 18 months to 12 years. 

5. Infant Communion. — Infant communion, which immersionists 
love to class as an equal and similar superstition to infant baptism, is 
a clear proof of the earlier prevalence of the latter. For the primitive 
Church never gave the Lord's supper before baptism. 

But Tradition No Authority to Us. — But we do not rely on the 
patristic testimony as our decisive argument, but on Scripture. The 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 241 

Church early became superstitious ; and many of their superstitions, as 
baptismal regeneration and infant communion, they profess to base on 
Scripture. But where they do so, we can usually trace and expose 
their misunderstanding of it. This current and early testimony is re- 
lied on, not as proving by itself that we are warranted to baptize in- 
fants, but as raising a strong probability that it was an apostolic usage, 
and thus supporting our Scriptural argument. 

X. Does Infant Baptism Corrupt the Church I — Immersionists 
object vehemently to infant baptism and membership that it overflows 
the spirituality of Christ's Church with a multitude of worldly, nomi- 
nal Christians. One of them has written a book on "the evils of infant 
baptism." They point to the lamentable state of religion in Europe, 
in the Papacy, and in the Oriental Churches, as the legitimate results. 
They urge : If our Confession and Government are correct in saying, 
* all baptized persens are members of the Church,' &c, (Bk. Disc. Ch. 
I, § 6,) consistency would lead us, of course, to admit them, without 
saving change, to suffrage, to office, and to sealing ordinances ; we 
should baptize their children in turn (as Methodists, Episcopalians, 
Papists, do), and thus the whole world would be brought unsanctifled 
into the Church, obliterating its spirituality. But Christ intended it 
to be composed only of His converted followers. The only reason why 
Presbyterian, and other Churches in America, do not exhibit these 
abominable results is that they do not act out their creeds, and practi- 
cally regard the unconverted^ baptized as no members." I reply : 

Mixture in the Church Foreseen by Christ. — 1. The notion that 
Christ would organize His religious kingdom on earth in contrast to 
human society, admitting none but pure members, is plausible and 
pretty. Yea, the unthinking may re'ason, that as He is autocrat, heart- 
searching, almighty, His voluntary embracing of any impure material 
would look like a voluntary connivance at sin, and indifference to that 
sanctity which the Church was formed to promote. But it is a Utopian 
and unscriptural dream. See Matt, xiii : 24 and 47. Christ has not 
even formed the hearts of His own people thus ; but permits evil to mix 
with them. A Church to be administered by human hands must be 
mixed ; anything else is but a dishonest pretense, even among immer- 
sionists. Christ permits a mixed body not because He likes it, but be- 
cause His wisdom sees it best under the circumstances. 

Mediaeval Churches Corrupted Ohterwise. — 2. It is not fair to 
argue from the abuse, but from proper use of an institution. Note : 
God's arrangement under the old dispensation was liable to the same 
evils, for,infant Church-membership abused certainly led there to hor- 
rid corruptions. The wide corruptions of Popish and other European 
Churches are not traceable to proper use of infant baptism, but to 
other manifest causes : neglect of youthful training, State establish- 
ments, Paganism infused, hierarchical institutions, &c. If infant mem- 
bership were the great corruptor, and its absence the great safeguard, 
immersed churches ought to be uniformly pure. How is this? It is 
an invidious task to make the inquiry ; but it is their own game. Look, 
then, at Ironsides, Dunkers, Mormons, African Churches in America. 
We shall not be so uncharitable as to charge all this on immersion. 



242 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

Safeguards. — 3. Enough for us to answer for our own principles, 
not those of Papists, Episcopalians, Methodists. We have stated our 
limitations on infant baptism. Where they are observed, and the duties 
pledged in the sacrament are tolerably performed, it results in high 
benefit. When wa teach that all baptized persons " should perform all 
the duties of Church-members," it is not meant with unconverted 
hearts. The Church states the great Bible doctrine that in baptism 
renewing graces are promised and sealed ; and if the adult does not get 
them, it is his fault. Our doctrine does not break down the distinction 
made between spiritual and carnal by sealing ordinances one whit, or 
give to the baptized member one particle of power to corrupt the suf- 
frage or government of the Church. 

XT. Tbe remaining cavils are best answered by stating the Scriptu- 
ral view of the relation of unregenerate baptized children to the 
Church, and the benefits thence enuring : 

Baptized Members in What Sense? — Illustrated by Minors 
in Commonwealth. — When our standards say, "All baptized persons 
are members of the Church," this by no means implies their title to all 
sealing ordinances, suffrage, and office. They are minor citizens in the 
ecclesiastical commonwealth, under tutelage, training, and instruction, 
and government ; heirs, if they will exercise the graces obligatory on 
them, of all the ultimate franchises of the Church, but not allowed to 
enjoy them until qualified. Yet they are justly under ecclesiastical 
government. The reasonableness of this position is well illustrated by 
that of minors under the civil commonwealth. These owe allegiance 
and obedience, and are under the government : they are made to pay 
taxes, to testify in courts, and, after a time, even to do military service 
and labour on the highway. They can be tried for crimes, and even 
capitally punished. But they may neither sit as judges in a jury, bear 
office, nor vote for officers, until a full age is supposed to confer the 
suitable qualification. Such must be the regulations of any organized 
society which embraces (on any theory) families within it. And- if 
the family is conceived as the integer of which the society is consti- 
tuted, this Status of minor members of families is yet more proper, yea, 
unavoidable. But such is precisely the conception of the Scriptures, 
concerning the integers of which both the State and the Church are 
constituted. Now, the visible Church is an organized human society, 
constituted of Christian families as integers, for spiritual ends — reli- 
gious instruction, sanctification, holy living and glorification of its mem- 
bers. Hence, it seems most reasonable that unregenerate members of 
those families shall be, on the one hand, included under its govern- 
ment; and, on the other, not endowed with its higher franchises. The 
State, whose purposes are secular, fixes the young citizen'* majority 
when, by full age, he is presumed to have that bodily and mental 
growth of the adult which fits him for its duties. The Church recog- 
nizes the majority of its minor citizens when they show that spiritual 
qualification — a new heart — necessary for handling its spiritual con- 
cernments. The Church visible is also a school of Christ. Schools, 
notoriously, must include untaught children. That is what they exist 
for. But they do not allow these children to teach and govern ; they 
are there to be taught and restrained. The analogy is most instructive. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 243 

This Relation Natural. — The Immersionist says that our commu- 
nion is only saved from utter corruption by our own inconsistency ; that 
while our constitution calls our children Church members, we fortu- 
nately treat them, as they do, as not Church members. Whereas the 
immersionist charges us with a wicked inconsistency, I will retort upon 
him the charge of a pious one : Those of them who are truly good peo- 
ple, while they say their children are not Church members, fortunately 
treat them as though they were. They diligently bring them under 
the instructions, restraints, and prayers of the Church and pastor. 
Happily, the instincts and influences of the Christian family are so 
deeply founded and so powerful that a perverse and unscriptural theory 
cannot arrest them. These Christians discard the Bible conception of 
the visible Church, as an organized body whose integers are Christian 
" houses," and adopt the unscriptural and impracticable theory of a 
visible Church organized of regenerate individuals. But, blessed be 
God ! the light and love of a sanctified parent's heart are too strong to 
be wholly perverted by this theory; they still bring the family, as a 
whole, virtually within the Church. And this is the reason that true 
religion is perpetuated among them. 

Discipline Consists in Instruction and Restraint. — But a more 
definite answer may be desired to the inquiry, What are the precise 
shape and extent of this instruction and government which constitute 
the Church's "discipline*' over its unregenerate members? To give 
a clearer answer, let us distinguish the instruction from the restraint ; 
the two together make up the idea of discipline. As to the former, 
the teaching of church-presbyters and catechists is by no means to su- 
percede that of the parents, but only to assist and re-enforce it. Into 
the sacred relation of parent and child no other human authority, not 
even that which Christ Himself has appointed in His Church, may in- 
trude. None can sufficiently replace it. But all these baptized mem- 
bers are the " charge" of the pastor and session ; and it is the duty of 
these "overseers" to provide for them, and to see that they enjoy the 
publick and social instructions of the gospel. And pastors and elders 
should, moreover, extend to them that advice in temptation, and those 
efforts to comfort them in affliction, and to secure the sanctification of 
their trials, which they extend to communing members. 

Restraint applied, first, Through Parents. The Rule of Liv- 
ing. — As to the ecclesiastical control or restraint over these unregene- 
rate members. I remark, first, that the rule of morals should be the 
same as that imposed on communicating members, save that the former 
are not to be forced, nor even permitted, without spiritual qualification, 
to take part in sealing ordinances, and church-powers. [But as to their 
neglect of these, they should be constantly taught that their disquali- 
fication is their fault, and not their misfortune merely ; a sinful exer- 
cise of their free-agency, a subject for personal and present repentance ; 
a voluntary neglect and rejection of saving graces, the sincere offer 
wherof was sealed to them in their baptism. And for this their sin of 
heart, the Church utters a continuous, a sad and affectionate, yet a 
righteous censure, in keeping them in the state of minor members.] The 
propriety of exacting the same rule of living, in other respects, ap- 
pears thus : Christ has but one law for man ; these baptised members 



m SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

are co Dsecra t e d and separated to Christ's service in the Church as truly 
as the communicating members ; they owe the same debt of devotion 
for the mercies of redemption, which are their offered heritage. Hence, 
it should be constantly taught them that questionable worldly amuse- 
ments, for instance, are as inconsistent in them as in other Church 
members. In a word, the end of this Church authority, under which 
Providence has placed them, is to constrain them to live Christian live?, 
in order that thereby they may come unto the Christian graces in the 
heart. 

Second, as to the means of enforcement of that rule : I would 
answer, that in the ease of all baptized members of immature age, 
and especially of such as are still in the houses, and under the 
government of parents, the Church-session ought mainly to restrain 
them through their parents. That is, the authority of these rulers 
should be applied to the parents, to cause them, by their domes- 
tic authority, to lead outward Christian lives, and attend upon the 
means of grace. And the refusal or neglect of parents to do this duty, 
may doubtless subject them to just church-censure. Perhaps we may 
safely say, that the session should reach this class of baptized members 
only through their parents, except in the case where the parents them- 
selves refer the child's contumacy to the eldership. In this case the 
eldership may undoubtedly proceed to censure the recusant child. See 
an analogous case in the theocracy, Deut. xxi . 18, &c. 

If adult, the restraint is direct. It mat proceed to Excom- 
municate. — If these baptized unregenerate members are fully adult, 
and passed from parental control, then the church-session must apply 
their restraint directly to them. The mere continuance of their unre- 
generacy, unfitting them for communion, will of course be no suitable 
ground for judicial prosecution. For the Church is already uttering 
her standing censure against this, in their exclusion from the Lord's 
table. If they become wayward in outward conduct, then the session, 
in addition to their constant and affectionate admonitions against their 
impenitence, should administer paternal cautions, advice, and entreaty, 
looking towards a reformation. But if they persist in flagrant and in- 
decent sins, such as the persistent neglect of all ordinances, sensuality, 
blasphemy, or dishonesty, (such sins as would bring on a communing 
member excommunication,) then nothing remains but that the Session 
shall proceed, by judicial prosecution, to cut the reprobate member 
off from the Church. 

Some Fair Way Must Be Provided to Cut Off the Reprobate. 
Not only the Scriptures, but common sense, justify this view. Are 
they " members of the Church 1 ? " (in the minor sense.) Then natural 
justice teaches that they cannot be stripped of the privileges of that 
membership, be they what they may, without a fair opportunity for 
defence, and confronting the accusing witnesses. To judge a man 
without formal hearing is iniquity. On the other hand, are they, in 
any sense, "members of the Church"? Then, to that degree, the 
Church is responsible for their discredit, and subject to the scandal of 
their irregularities. Common sense says, then, that there must be a 
fair way for the Church to obtain a formal severance of the mem- 
bership, and publioly cleanse herself of the scandal of this contuma- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 245 

cious member. That way can be none other than judicial prosecutions. 
Finally, when a member is so thoroughly reprobate that, to human ap- 
prehension, there is no chance of his receiving any of the ends of a 
Church connexion, there ought to be a way to terminate it ; it has be- 
come objectless. 

Our Usage Delinquent. — On this statement of the matter, it is ob- 
vious that the usage in our churches has fallen exceedingly far from 
the Bible rule, and that the taunts of the immersionists are to a great 
degree well founded ; that we are not consistent in our paodobaptism. 
And it may be that the leavening of men's minds, in this country, with 
the unscriptural ideas of the immersionists may have produced a li- 
cense of feeling among youths which greatly increases the difficulty of 
Church Sessions doing their whole duty. It may, indeed, be almost 
impossible for any single Session to do it among us in the face of this 
unfortunate corruption of society, and of the obstinate neglect of all 
sister Church Sessions around them. But the question for the honest 
mind is, Should a corrupt practice continue to preclude a right princi- 
ciple 1 Or should the correct principle amend the vicious practice? 
And the happy example of many of the Reformed churches teaches us 
that this discipline of baptized members is feasible, reasonable, and 
most profitable. The Presbyterian Church of Holland, for instance, 
in its better days ; and the Evangelical Church of Holland now, uni- 
formly governs their children on the Scriptural principles above de- 
scribed. 

Benefits of the Bible Plan — Children of the Church its Hope. 
The benefits of infant baptism, and of this form of membership for the 
children of God's believing people, are great. Some of them are very 
forcibly set forth by Dr. John M. Mason, in his invaluable treatise on 
the Church. Borrowing in part from him, I would remark that this 
relation to the Church, and this discipline, are, first, in exact harmony 
with the great fact of experience that the children of Cod's people are 
the great hope of the Church's increase. This being a fact, it is obvi- 
ously wisdom to organize the Church with reference to it, so as to pro- 
vide every proper means of training for workingup this the most hope- 
ful material for Zion's increase. To neglect this obvious policy seems, 
indeed, little short of madness. As we have seen, immersionists' com- 
munions only enjoy true prosperity in virtue of their virtual employ- 
ment of the principle of infant Church-membership ; grace and love 
being in them, fortunately, stronger than a bad theory. 

The Bible Plan Agrees with Nature and Grace — Prov. xxii : 6. 

Second : This Bible plan is in strict conformity with those doctrines of 
grace and principles of human nature which Cod employs for the sanc- 
tification of His people. Our theory assumes that God's covenant is 
with His people and their seed. (Acts ii : 29.) That their seed are 
heirs of the promises made to the fathers (Acts iii : 25); that the cause 
which excludes any such from saving interest in redemption is volun- 
tary and criminal, viz., unbelief and impenitence — a cause which they 
are all bound to correct at once, if they are arrived at years of discre- 
tion ; that the continuance of this cause, however just a reason for the 
eldership's excluding them from certain privileges and functions, is no 
justification whatever for their neglecting them. And, above all, does 



246 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

our plan found itself on the great rule of experience, common sense, 
and Scripture, that if you would form a soul to the hearty embracing 
of right principles, you must make him observe the conduct which that 
principle dictates. Every faithful parent in the world acts on that 
rule in rearing his children. If the child is untruthful, unsympathiz- 
ing, unforgiving, indolent, he compels him, while young, to observe a 
course of truth, charity, forgiveness, and industry. Why 1 Because 
the parent considers that the outward observance of these virtues will 
be either permanent or praiseworthy if, when the child becomes a man, 
he only observes them from fear or hypocrisy 1 Not at all ; but be- 
cause the parent knows that human nature is moulded by habits ; that 
the practice of a principle always strengthens it ; that this use of his 
parental authority is the most natural and hopeful means to teach the 
child heartily to prefer and adopt the right principle, when he becomes 
his own man ; that it would be the merest folly to pretend didactically 
to teach the child the right, and leave all-powerful Habit to teach him 
the wrong, and to let the child spend his youth in rivetting the bonds 
of bad habit, which, if he is ever to adopt and love the right principle, 
he must break. Will not our heavenly Father act on the same rule of 
good sense toward His children ? Is not the professed principle of the 
immersionist just the folly we have described? Happily, Scripture 
agrees with all experience and practical wisdom in saying that if you 
wish a child to adopt and love the principles of a Church-member when 
he is grown, you must make him behave as a Church-member while he 
is growing. 

Collateral Advantages. — Third : Many collateral advantages are 
gained by this minor citizenship of the baptized in the Church. They 
are retained under wholesome restraints. Their carnal opposition to 
the truth is greatly disarmed by early association. The numerical and 
pecuniary basis of the Church's operations is widened. And where the 
sealing ordinances are properly guarded, these advantages are gained 
without any compromise of the Church's spirituality. Paedobaptist 
communities which are scripturally conducted present as high a grade 
of purity, even including their baptized members, as any others. For 
on this corrupt earth, the best communion is far from being what it 
ought to be. Where the duties represented in the sacrament of bap- 
tism are properly followed up, the actual regeneration of children is 
the ordinary result. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 24 7 

LECTURE LXV. 



SYLLABUS. 
THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

See Confession of Faith, Ch. XXIX, with Catechisms. 

1. Give a definition of this sacrament, with the Scriptural account of its 
institution, names, and ceremonial. 

See Matt, xxvi : 26-29. Mark xiv : 22-26. Luke xxii : 15 to 21. 1 Cor. 
x : 16, 17, xi : 17 to end. Dick, Lect. 92. Turrettin, Loc. XIX, que. 21. 

2. "What are the elements, in what manner to be prepared and set apart, and 
what their sacramental significance ? 

Turrettin, que. 22, 23, 24. Hill, Bk. Y, Ch. 7. Dick, Lect. 92. 

3. State and refute the doctrine of the real presence by a Transubstantiation, 
with the elevation and worship of the host. 

Council of Trent, Sess. 13, especially Ch. 4. Turrett., que. 26 and 27. 
Calvin's Inst., Bk. IV, Ch. 18. Hill, as above. Archbishop Tillottson and 
Bishop Stillingfleet against Transubstantiation. Dick, Lect. 90. 

4. State and refute the doctrine of Consubstantiation. 

Turrett., que. 26 and 28. Augsb. Confession, and other Lutheran sym- 
bols. Hill, as above. Dick, Lect. 91. 

I. Scriptural Names. — The only other sacrament which Protest- 
ants recognize, besides baptism, is that called by them, in imitation of 
Paul (1 Cor. xi: 20), " The Lord's Supper" (Deipnon Kyriacon). 
The only other Scriptural names which seem clearly established are 
the breaking of bread (klasis artou, Acts ii : 46, xx : 7), and possibly 
koinonia (1 Cor. x: 1G). The cup is called poterion eulogias (1 Cor. 
x : 16), but this is evidently not a name for the whole ordinance. And 
in verse 21, communicating is called partaking of the Lord's Table 
(trapedza). This hardly amounts to a calling of the ordinance by the 
name of 'table; ' but it is instructive, as showing no favour whatever 
to the notion of altars and sacrifice, as connected with the Lord's sup- 
per. 

Patristic Names. — Among the fathers it was called often eucha- 
ristia, sometimes synaxis or leitourgia, more often THUSiA,or mystr- 
rion ; or, among the Latins, missa. The use of the word thusia was 
at first only rhetorical and figurative ; and thus the error of consider- 
ing the Lord's supper an actual sacrifice had its way prepared. While 
the Romanists sometimes endeavor to trace the word missa to other 
etynoms (as to mas, tribute; misteth, banquet; or to muesis, initia- 
tion), its derivation is undoubtedly from the formulary with which the 
spectators and catechumens were dismissed before the celebration of 
the Lord's supper: Missa est (viz., congregatio). 

Definition and Nature. — The definition which Presbyterians hold, 
is that of our Catechisms, e. g., Shorter, Qu. 96 : " The Lord's supper 
is a sacrament wherein, by giving and receiving bread and wine, ac- 
cording to Christ's appointment, His death is showed forth; and the 
worthy receivers are not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith 
made partakers of His body and blood, with all His benefits, to their 
spiritual nourishment and growth in grace." This is obviously no 
more than a correct digest of the views stated or implied in the sundry 
passages where the ordinance is described. Its institution was evidently 



248 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

simple and free from mystery ; and had not the strange career of super- 
stition been run on this subject by the Christian Church, the dispas- 
siqnate reader would have derived no conceptions from the sacred nar- 
rative but the simple ones of a commemorative seal. And these natu- 
ral, popular views of the sacrament are doubtless best adapted for edi- 
fication. 

History of Institution. — I hold that our Saviour undoubtedly held 
His last passover on the regular passover evening, and that this ordi- 
nance, intended by Him to supersede and replace the passover (1 Cor. 
v : 7), was very quietly introduced at its close. To do this, He took up 
the bread (doubtless the unleavened bread of the occasion), and the 
cup of wine (after Jewish fashion mingled with water) provided for 
the occasion, and intruduced them to their new use by an act of solemn 
thanksgiving to God. Then He brake the bread and distributed it, 
and, after the bread, the wine — partaking of neither Himself — saying : 
6i This do in remembrance of Me ; eat, drink ye all of it, to show forth 
the Lord's death till He come." These mandatory words were accom- 
panied also with certain explicatory words, conveying the nature of 
the symbol and pledge ; stating that the bread represented His body, 
and the cup the covenant made in His blood — the body lacerated and 
killed, and the blood shed, for redemption. The sacramental acts, 
therefore, warranted by Christ are, the taking, breaking, and distrib- 
uting the elements, on the administrator's part, and their manual re- 
ception, and eating or drinking, on the recipient's part. The sacra- 
mental loords are the thanksgiving, the explicatory and promissory, and 
the mandatory. The whole is then' appropriately concluded with 
another act of praise (not sacramental, but an -appendage thereto), 
either by praying, or singing, or both. And to add any thing else is 
superstition. 

II. Elements. — To continue this subject : The elements are bread 
and wine. The Greek Church says the bread must be leavened, the 
Latin unleavened ; making this a point of serious importance. We be- 
lieve that the bread used was paschal. But it was not Christ's inten- 
tion to give a paschal character to the new sacrament ; and bread is 
employed as the material element of nutrition, the one most familiar 
and universal. Hence, we regard all the disputes as lo leaven, and , 
the other minutiae made essential by the Romish Rubrick (wheaten, 
mingled with proper water, not worm-eaten, &c.,) as non-essential. 
Probably the wine was also mingled with water on the first occasion ; 
but, on the same grounds, we regard it. as selected simply as the most 
common and familiar refreshment of the human race, and the presence 
of water is therefore non-essential. Indeed, modern chemistry has 
shown that in all wine water is the solvent, and the largest constituent. 

Their Consecration What 1 — According to all Christians, these 
elements are conceived as undergoing some kind of consecration. Rome 
places this in the pronunciation of the words of institution, " This is 
My body," and teaches that it results in a total change of the substance 
of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. But the only 
change which Protestants admit in a consecration of the elements is 
the simple change of their use, from a common to a sacred and sacra- 
mental one. And this consecration we believe to be wrought, not by 
pronouncing the words, "This is My body," but by the eucharistic act 
of worship which introduces the sacrament. For the natural language 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 249 

•of consecration is that of worship ; not that of a didactic and promissory 
sentence. Witness the cases of grace over our food, and all the con- 
secrations of the Old Testament, e. g., Deut. xxvi : 5-10. When Christ 
says "This is My body," were the consecration what Papists suppose, 
these words would imply that it is already made. And last, the words, 
supposed by them to be words of consecration, are too variant in the 
different histories of the Sacrament in Sacred Scripture. 

Breaking of the Bread significant. — The breaking of the bread 
is plainly one of the sacramental acts, and should never be done before- 
hand, by others, nor omitted by the minister. The words heis artos 
(1 Cor. x : 17) are not correctly represented in the English version. 
The proper force of the word, as may be seen in Jno. vi : 9, is loaf, 
or 1 more properly, cake; and the Apostle's idea is, that the oneness of 
the mass of bread, and of the cup, partaken by all, signifies their unity 
in one spiritual body. It would be better that the bread should be 
taken by the officiator in one mass, and broken before the people, after 
the prayer. The proper significancy of the sacrament requires it; for 
the Christ we commemorate is the Christ lacerated and slain. Fur- 
ther ; Christ brake the bread, in distributing it ; and commanded us to 
imitate Him, saying: "This do," &c. Third; the Apostles undoubt- 
edly made the breaking one of the sacramental acts ; for Paul says, 1 
Cor. x: 16, "The bread which we break," &c. Last, when the sacra- 
ment itself is more often called "the breaking of bread," than by any 
other one name, it can hardly be supposed that the breaking is not a 
proper part of the ceremonial. 

Pouring of the Wine, after the Bread, Significant. — There is 
also a significancy in the taking of the wine after the bread, in a dis- 
tinct act of reception ; because it is the blood as separated from the 
body by death, that we commemorate. Hence the soaking of the bread 
in the cup is improper, as well as the plea by which Rome justifies com- 
munion in one kind ; that as the blood is in the body, the bread conveys 
alone a complete sacrament. As we should commemorate it, the blood 
is not in the body, but poured out. 

Significant Acts of Communicants. — The acts on the Communi- 
cant's part also, are sacramental and significant, viz : the taking and 
eating. These^acts symbolize generally, Faith, as the soul's receptive 
act ; just as the elements distributed by God's institution signify that 
which is the object of faith, Christ slain for our redemption. But the 
Confession 29, § 1, states, in greater detail, and with strict scriptural 
propriety, that these acts commemorate Christ's death, constitute a pro- 
fession and engagement to serve Him, show the reception of a covenant- 
ed redemption thus sealed to us, and indicate our communion with each 
other and Christ, our Head, in one spiritual body. The first idea is 
plainly set forth in 1 Cor. 1 1 : 24, last clause, as well as parallel pas- 
sages, and in verses 25 and 26. The second is implied in the first, in 
the individual character of the act, in 1 Cor. xi : 25, "covenant," and in 
the nature of faith, which embraces Christ as our Saviour from sin unto 
holiness. The third idea is plainly implied in the significancy of the 
elements themselves, which are the materials of nutrition and refresh- 
ment ; as well as in Jno. vi : 50-55. For though we strenuously dis- 
pute, against Rome, that the language of this passage is descriptive of 
the Lord's Supper, it is manifest that the supper was afterwards devised 



\ 

250 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

upon the analogy which furnished the metaphor of the passage. And 
the didactic and promissory language, "This is My body,'"' "This is My 
blood," sacramentally understood, obviously convey the idea of nutri- 
tion offered to the soul. The last idea is very clearly set forth in 1 Cor. 
x : 16, 17. And this is the feature of the sacrament from which it has 
received its popular name, of Communion of the Lord's Supper. 

Who may Partake 1 — -The parties who may properly partake of the 
Lord's Supper are so clearly defined, 1 Cor. si : 27-BO, as to leave no 
room for debate. It is those who have examined themselves successfully 
of their knowledge to discern the Lord's body and faith to feed on Him, 
repentance, love, and new obedience." Shorter Catechism, question 97. 
See also, Larger Catechism, question 171-175. That this sacrament is 
to be given only to credible professors, does not indeed follow necessa- 
rily from the fact that it symbolizes saving graces ; for baptism does 
this; but from this express limitation of Paul, and from the different 
graces symbolized. Baptism symbolizes those graces which initiate the 
Christian life : The Supper, those also which continue it. Hence, 
while the former is once applied to infants born within the covenant, to 
ratify their outward membership, in the dependence on the gracious 
promise that they shall be brought to commence the Christian life after- 
wards, it would be wrong to grant the second sacrament to any who have 
not given some indication of an actual progress in spiritual life. 

III. The Supper soon perverted by two Errors. — -Thus far, all 
has been intelligible, reasonable, and adapted to nourish and comfort 
the faith of the plain believer. But the well-informed are aware that 
this ordinance, so quietly and simply introduced by our Saviour, and 
so simply explained, has met the strange fortune of becoming the espe- 
cial subject of superstitious amplification ; until in the Romish Church, 
it has become nearly the whole' of worship. It would be interesting to 
trace the history of this growth ; but time only allows us to remark, that 
two unscriptural ideas became early associated with it ; in consequence 
of a pagan grossness of perception, and a false exposition of Scripture. 
One of these was that of a literal or real corporeal presence ; the other 
that of a true sacrifice for sin. Still, those more superstitious Chris- 
tians who held these two ideas, did not, for a long time, define the man- 
ner in which they were supposed to be true. At length two theories 
developed themselves, that of Paschasius Radbert, transubstantiation ; 
and that of Berengar, consubstantiation. The former of these triumphed 
in the Lateran Council 1215 ; the latter was condemned as heretical, 
till Luther revived it, though stripped of the sacrificial feature. 

Transubstantiation. — According to Rome, when the Priest canoni- 
cally, and with proper intention, pronounces the words in the mass: 
" Hoc est corpus naeum," the bread and wine are changed into the very 
body and blood of the living Christ, including of course, His soul and 
divinity; which mediatorial person, the Priest does then truly and lit- 
erally break and offer again, as a proper sacrifice for the sins of the 
living and the dead ; and he and the people eat Him. True ; the acci- 
dents, or material qualities of bread and wine remain, but in and un- 
der them, the substance of bread is gone, and the substance really ex- 
isting is Christ's person. But in this condition of things, it exists with- 
out the customary material attributes of locality, extension, and divisi- 
bility ; for He is none the less in heaven, and in all the hosts, all over 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 25 1 

the world at once * and into however small parts they may be divided, 
each is a perfect Christ ! Hence, to elevate, and carry this host in pro- 
cession, and to worship it with Latvia is perfectly proper. Whether 
such a batch of absurdities is really believed by any reflecting mind, it 
is not for us to decide. 

Scriptural Arguments for. — The scriptural basis for this mon- 
strous superstructure is very narrow, while the patristic is wide enough. 
Rome depends chiefly in Scripture on the language of Jno. vi : 50, &c, 
and on the assertion of the absolutely literal interpretation of the words 
of institution in the parallel passages cited by us at the beginning. 
We easily set aside the argument from Jno. vi : 50, &c, by the remark, 
that it applies not to the Lord's Supper, but to the spiritual actings of 
faith on Christ figuratively described. For the Lord's Supper was not 
yet instituted"; and it is absurd to suppose that our Saviour would use 
language necessarily unintelligible to all His followers, the subject 
never having been divulged to them. On the contrary, in verse 35, we 
find that the coming and eating is defined as the actings of faith. If 
the chapter be forced into an application to the Supper, then verses 53 
and 54 explicitly teach that every one who eats the supper goes to 
heaven, and that no one who fails to eat it does ; neither of which Rome 
admits : And in verse 63, our Saviour fixes a figurative and spiritual in- 
terpretation of His words, beyond all question. 

Words of Institution properly Explained. — When we proceed 
to the words of institution, we assert that the obvious meaning is tropi- 
cal ; and is equivalent to "This represents my body." The evidences of 
this are manifold. First, we cite the frequency of similar locutions in 
Hebrew, and Hebraistic Greek. Consult Gen. xli : 26, 27 ; Ezek. xxxvii : 
11 ; Dan. vii : 24 ; Exod. xii : 11 ; Matt, xiii : 38, 39 ; Rev. i : 20 ; xvii : 
9, 12, 18, et passim. Yea, we find Christ saying of Himself: "lam 
the way, the truth, the life," Jno. xiv : 6 ; "the vine," Jno. xv : 1 ; 
"the door," Jno. x: 9. Why is a tropical exposition more reasonable 
or necessary here 1 Yet, without it we make absolute nonsense. 

True meaning or Pross. — But even if we had no usage to illus- 
trate our Saviour's sense, it would be manifest from the text and 
context alone, that His sense is tropical. The touto must be demon- 
strative of bread, and equivalent to, this bread (is my body) ; because 
bread is the nearest antecedent, the whole series of the narrative shows 
it ; in the parallel case of the wine the cup is, in one narrative, expressed ; 
and the allusion of Paul, 1 Cor. x: 16, " The bread which we break," 
shows it. So, the soma means evidently the body dead, (corpse,) as is 
proved by the expression " broken for you," and by the fact that the 
blood is separated from it : as well as by current usage of narratives. 
Now paraphrase the sentence : " This bread is my dead body," and any 
other than a tropical sense is impossible. For a.) The predication is 
self-contradictory ; if it is bread, it is not body ; if body, it is not bread. 
Subject or predicate is out of joint, b.) The body was not yet dead, 
by many hours, c.) Incompaticables cannot be predicated of each 
other. A given substance A. cannot be changed into a substanee B. 
which was pre-existent before the change ; because the change must 
bring B. into existence. 

So the Disciples must have apprehended it. — Again : all will 
admit that the proper sense is that in whioh the disciples comprehended 



252 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

the words as first spoken. It is impossible that they should nave-un- 
derstood the bread as truly the body: because they saw the body hand- 
ling the bread ! The body would have been wholly in its own hand ! 
Scripture calls it bread still after it is said, by Papists, to be tran- 
substantiated. 1 Cor. x: 17. "All partakers of that one bread," 
See also, 1 Cor. xi: 26, 27,28. 

There are variations of language which are utterly incompatible with 
a strictly literal sense. In the gospels it is said : " He took the cup 
. . . and said This is iny blood," &c. There must be here a metonymy 
of the cup for that which it contains — at least. But in 1 Cor., xi : 25, 
the words are " This cup is the new covenant in my blood," &c, where, 
if literalness is retained, we get the impossible and most unpopish 
idea, that the cup was the covenant. 

Tr.ansubstantia.tion absurd, a.) Because tt violates our Senses. 
But passing from the exegetical, to the general argument, a literal 
transubstantiation is impossible, because it violates our sense&. They 
all tell us it is still bread and wine, by touch, taste, smell, sight. The 
senses are the only inlets of information as to external facts ; if we 
may not believe their deliberate testimony, there is an end of all ac- 
quired knowledge. This may be fairly stated in a stronger form : it is 
impossible that my mind can be validly taught the fact of such a tran- 
substantiation ; for the only channel by which I can be taught it is the 
senses ; and transubstantiation, if true, would teach me that my senses 
do not convey truth. It is just as likely that I do not hear Rome 
saying, " Transubstantiation is true," when I seem to hear her, as that 
I do not see a wafer, but a Christ, when I seem to see it. Nor is it any 
answer to say : the senses deceive us. This is only when hurried ; and 
the sensible medium imperfect, or senses diseased. Here all the four 
senses of all men, in health, unanimously perceive only bread and wine, 
b.) It violates Reason. No Plea to call it a Miracle. — In the 
second place, it is impossible to be true ; because it violates our under- 
standing. Our mental intuitions compel us to recognize substance by 
its sensible attributes. Those attributes inhere only in the substance, 
and can only be present by its presence. It is impossible to avoid this 
reference. An attribute or accident is relative to its substance ; to at- 
tempt to conceive of it as separate destroys it. Again : it is impossible 
for us to abstract from matter, the attributes of locality, dimension, and 
devisibility. But transubstantiation requires us to conceive of Christ's 
body without all these. Again : it is impossible for matter to be ubi- 
quitous ; but Christ's body must be so, if this doctrine is true. And it 
is vain to attempt an evasion of these two arguments from sense and 
reason, by pleading a great and mysterious miracle. For God's omnip- 
otence does not work the impossible and the natural contradiction. 
And, whatever miracle has ever taken place, has necessarily been just 
as dependent on human senses, for man's cognizance of its occurrence, 
as any common event. So that if the fundamental law of the senses 
is outraged, man is as incapable of knowing a miracle as any other thing, 
c) It violates the Analogy of Faith. — Once more, the doctrine 
of transubstantiation contradicts the analogy of faith. It is incom- 
patible with our Saviour's professed attitude and intention, which was 
then to institute a sacrament. But Rome herself defines a sacrament 
as an outward sign of an invisible grace. Hence, Christ's attitude and 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 253 

intention naturally lead us to regard the elements as only signs. This 
is true of all the sacraments of Old and New Testaments, unless this 
he an exception : and especially of the passover, on which the supper 
was engrafted. 

Transubstantiation would utterly destroy the nature of a sacrament ; 
because, if the symbols are changed into the Christ, there is no sign. 

It contradicts also the doctrine of Christ's ascension and second ad- 
vent. For these teach us, that He is at the Father's right hand now, 
and will only come thence at the final consummation. 

It contradicts the doctrine of atonement, substituting a loathsome 
form of sacred (literal) cannibalism, for that faith of the soul, which 
receives the legal effects of Christ's atoning sufferings as its justification. 

Therefore, Host not to be Worshipped. — Transubstantiation being 
disproved, all elevation and worship of the host, as well as kneeling at 
the sacrament, are disproved. The Episcopal reasons for the latter are, 
that while no change of the bread and wine is admitted, and no worship 
of them designed, yet the reverence, contrition and homage of the be- 
liever for his crucified Saviour prompt him to kneel to Christ. We reply, 
that the worship of Christ is of course proper at all proper times. But 
the attitude of worship is not proper at the moment when Christ ex- 
pressly commands us to do something else than kneel. Had the para- 
lytic, for instance, of Matt, ix : 5, 6, when he received the order, 
"Arise, take up thy bed and go," insisted on kneeling just then, it 
would have been disobedience, and not reverence. So, when Christ 
calls us to a communion in eating together His sacramental supper, the 
propor posture is that of a guest, for the time. If any Christian de- 
sires to show his homage by coming to the table from his knees, and re- 
turning from it to them, very well. But let him not kneel, in the very 
act in which Christ commands him to feast. 

IV. CONSUBSTANTIATION EQUALLY ERRONEOUS, BUT NOT SO IMPIOUS. 

Consubstantiation teaches that there is no literal change of the ele- 
ments, but that they remain simple bread and wine. Yet, in a myste- 
rious and miraculous manner, there is a real presence, in, under, and 
along with them, of the person of Christ, which is literally, though 
invisibly, eaten along with them. Unworthy communicants also receive 
it, to their own damnation. While this doctrine is not attended with 
the impious results of transubstantiation, it is liable to nearly ail the 
exegetical, sensible, rational, and doctrinal objections. Indeed, in one 
sense, the exegetical objections are stronger ; because if Uteralness 
must needs be retained in the words of institution, it is a less violation 
of language to make them mean tne bread is the body, than that the 
bread accompanies the body. The Lutheran exegesis, while boasting 
of its faithful preservation of our Saviour's language, really neither 
makes it literal, nor interprets it by any allowable trope. It does not 
outrage the understanding so much, by requiring us to believe that sub- 
stance can be separate from all its accidents ; for it professes to leave 
the substance of the bread untouched. Nor is it so obnoxious to the 
last head of objections raised against transubstantiation, in that it does 
not destroy the sacramental sign. But the rest of my arguments apply 
against it, and need not be recapitulated. 



254 SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 

LECTURE LXVI. 



SYLLABUS. 

THE LORD'S SUPPER, (concluded.) 

5. In what sense did Calvin hold a real presence ? "What was the doctrine of 
Zwinglius concerning it, and what that of the Presbyterian Church ? 

Calvin's Inst. Bk. IV. Ch. 17, § 1-11. Zwinglii Ratio Fidei. § 8. Conf. 
of Faith Ch. xxix. Dick and Hill as above. Turrettin, Loc. xix. Qu. 28. 
Hill and Dick, as above. 

6. Is the Lord's Supper a sacrifice ? 

See Council of Trent, Sess. 13. Ch. 2. Catechismus Rom. Pt. II. Ch. IV. 
Qu. 53. Turettin, Qu 29. Dick, Lect. 91. 

7. Are private communions admissible ? 
Catechismus Rom. as above. Dick, Lect. 92. 

8. Defend the propriety of communion in both kinds. 

Catechismus Rom. as above, Qu . 50, &c. Calvin Inst. Bk. IV. Ch. 17. Tur- 
rettin, Qu. 25. 

9. Who should administer the Lord's Supper ? 

Ridgeley, Qu. 168 to 170, § II. 
10. What is the nature of the efficiency of the sacrament to worthy commu- 
nicants, and of the sin of its abuse by the unworthy ? 

Calv. Inst. Bk. IV. Ch. 14, especially, § 17. Hill and Dick as above. 
Knapp, § 145. See also on whole, Knapp, § 144 and 146. 

Protestant View of Real Presence. — V. There is a sense, 
in which all evangelical christians would admit a real presence in 
the Lord's Supper. The second Person of the Trinity being very- 
God, immense and ubiquitous, is of course present wherever the 
bread and wine are distributed. Likewise, his operations are 
present? through the power of the Holy Ghost employing the ele- 
ments as means of grace, with all true believers communicating. 
(Matt. 18:20.) But this is the only sort of presence admitted 
by us. 

Zwinglian View of Supper. — Zwinglius, seemingly the most 
emancipated of all the reformers from superstition and prejudice, 
taught that the sacrament is only a commemorative seal, and that 
the human part of Christ's .person is not present in the sacra- 
ment, except to the faith of the intelligent believer. This he sus- 
tains irrefragably by the many passages in which we are taught 
that Christ's humanity is ascended into the heavens, thence to re- 
turn no more till the end of all things. That this humanity, 
however glorified, has its ubi, just as strictly as any human body ; 
that if there is any literal humanity fed upon for redemption by 
the believing communicant, it must be his passible and suffering 
humanity, while Christ's proper humanity is now glorified ; (which 
would necessitate giving Christ a double humanity ;) and that the 
sacramental language is tropical, as is evinced by a sound exegesis 
and the testimony of the better Fathers. The defect of the 
Zwinglian view is, that while it hints, it does not distinctly enough 
assert, the sealing nature of the sacraments. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 255 

Calvin's View. — Properly Grounded on vital Union to 
Christ yet overstrains it. — Both Romanist and Lutheran minds, 
accustomed to regard the Eucharist from points of view intensely 
mystical, received the Zwinglian with loud clamour, as being 
odiously bald and rationalistic. Calvin, therefore, being perhaps 
somewhat influenced by personal attachments to Melanchthon, 
and by a desire to heal the lamentable dissensions of Reformed 
and Lutherans, propounded [in his Inst, and elsewhere] an inter- 
mediate view. This is, that the humanity, as well as the divinity 
of Christ, in a word, his whole person, is spiritually, yet really 
present, not to the bodily mouth, but to the souls of true com- 
municants, so that though the humanity be in heaven only, it is 
still fed on in some ineffable, yet real and literal way, by the souls 
of believers. The ingenious and acute defence of this strange 
opinion, contained in the Inst. Bk. IV. Ch. 17, proceeds upon this 
postulate, which I regard as correct, and as eminently illustrative 
of the true nature of the sacramental efficiency ; that the Lord's 
Supper represents and applies the vital, mystical union of the Lord 
with believers. Such therefore as the vital union is, such must 
be our view of the sacrament of the Supper. Is the vital union 
then, only a secret relationship between Christ and the soul insti- 
tuted when faith is first exercised, and constituted by the indwell- 
ing and operation of the Holy Ghost : Or, is it a mysterious, 
yet substantial conjunction, of the spiritual substance, soul, to the 
whole substance of the mediatorial Person, including especially the 
humanity ? In a word, does the spiritual vitality propagate itself 
in a mode strictly analogous to that, in which vegetable vitality is 
propagated from the stock into the graft, by actual conjunction of 
substance ? Now Calvin answers, emphatically : the union is of 
the latter kind. His view seems to be, that not only the mediato- 
rial Person, but especially the corporeal part thereof has been es- 
tablished by the incarnation, as a sort of duct through which the 
inherent spiritual life of God, the fountain, is transmitted to be- 
lievers, through the mystical union. His arguments are, that the 
body of Christ is asserted to be our life, in places so numerous 
and emphatic (Jno. 1:4 14, 6:26, 33 ; 51-59, Eph. 5:30 ; I. Cor. 
6:15 ; Eph. 4:16) that exegetical fidelity requires of us to under- 
stand by it more than a participation in spiritual indwelling and 
influences purchased for believers by his death ; that the incom- 
prehensibility of a spiritual, though true and literal, substantial 
conjunction of our souls with Christ's flesh in heaven, should not 
lead us to reject the word of our God ; and that faith cannot be 
the whole amount of the vital union of believers to Christ, inas- 
much as it is said to be by faith. The union must be more than 
the means which constitutes it. 



256 SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 

Is Calvin's the Westminster Doctrine. — Now, it is this view 
of Calvin, which we find Hill asserting and Dick denying, as the 
established doctrine of the Anglican and Scotch Churches, and of 
the "Westminster Ass.. A careful examination of Ch. 29:§7, the 
decisive passage of our Confession will show, I think, that it was 
the intention of the Westminster Ass., while not repudiating Cal- 
vin's views or phraseology in a marked and individual manner, 
yet to modify all that was untenable and unscriptural in it. It is 
declared that worthy communicants "do really and indeed, yet 
not carnally and corporeally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon 
Christ crucified and all the benefits of his death : the body and 
blood of Christ being then not corporeally or carnally in, with, 
or under the bread and wine ; yet as really, but spiritually, pre- 
sent to the faith of believers," as the elements themselves to their 
senses. Note first : that they say believers receive and feed 
spiritually upon Christ crucified and the benefits of his death ; 
not with Calvin, on his literal flesh and blood. Next, the presence 
which grounds this receiving, is only a presence to our faith, of 
Christ's body and blood ! Hence we construe the confession we 
think fairly, to mean by the receiving and feeding, precisely the 
spiritual actings of faith in Christ as our Redeemer, and on his 
body slain, and blood poured out, as the steps of his atoning 
work ; so that the thing which the soul actually embraces, is not 
the corporeal substance of his slain body and shed blood, but their 
Redeeming virtue. The discriminating remarks of Turrettin, Qu. 
28, (Introduc.) are doubtless correct ; and are doubtless the ex- 
pression of the very view the Assembly intended to embody. The 
person of Christ cannot be said to be present in the sense of sub- 
stantive proximity or contact ; but only in this sense : that we say 
a thing is present, when it is under the cognizance of the faculty 
naturally adapted for its apprehension. Thus, the sun is called 
present in day, absent at night. He is no farther distant in fact ; 
but his beams do not operate on our visual organ. The blind man 
is said to be without light; although the rays may touch his 
sightless balls. So a mental or spiritual presence, is that which 
places the object before the cognizance of the appropriate mental 
faculty. In this sense only, the sacrament brings Christ before 
us ; that it places him, in faith, before the cognizance of the sanc- 
tified understanding and heart. 

Calvin's Proposition Impossible. — We reject the view of Cal- 
vin concerning the real presence, [recognizing our obligation to 
meet and account for the scriptures he quotes, in a believing and 
not in a rationalistic spirit ;] first, because it is not only incom- 
prehensible, but impossible. Does it not require us to admit, in 
admitting the literal [though spiritual] reception of Christ's corpo- 
real part, it in a distant heaven, and we on earth, that matter may 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 257 

exist without its essential attributes of locality and dimension ? — 
Have not our souls their ubi ? They are limited, substantively, 
to some spot within the superficies of our bodies, just as really as 
though they were material. Has not Christ's flesh its ubi, though 
gloritied, and as much more brilliant than ours, as a diamond is 
than carbon ? To my mind, therefore, there is the same violation 
of my intuitive reason, in this doctrine, as when transubstantia- 
tion requires me to believe that the flesh of Christ is present, in- 
divisible and unextended, in each crumb or drop of the elements. 
Both are contrary to the laws of extension. And that Christ's 
glorified body dwells on high, no more to return actually to earth 
till the final consummation is asserted too plainly and frequently 
to be disputed. (Matt. 26:11 ; Jno. 16:28; 17:11 ; 16:7; Luk. 24: 
51 ; Acts 3:21 ; 1:11. 

If any Body Present, it is the Body Dead. — Second. The 
bread broken aud wine poured out symbolize the body broken and 
slain, and blood shed, by death. Now, according to Calvin, it is 
the mystical union which is sealed and applied in the Lord's Sup- 
per, so as to propagate spiritual life ; and throughout John VI, 
where His life-giving flesh is so much spoken of, it is not the 
Lord's Supper, but the believers' union to Christ which is described. 
Well, how unreasonable is it to suppose spiritual life communicated 
through the actual, corporeal substance of Christ's body, at the 
very stage at which the body is itself lifeless ? 

Old Testament Saints Could not Share it. — Third. While 
the Old Testament believers had not the identical sacraments which 
we have, they had the same kind of spiritual life, nourished in the 
same way (see Rom. 4:5; Heb. 11, and especially I Cor. 10 : 1 
— 4). Here the very same figure is employed — that of eating and 
drinking. How could this be an eating of His flesh, when that 
flesh was not yet in existence ? 

The Conjunction is Simply Believing. — Fourth. The sixth 
chapter of John contains many internal marks, by which the feed- 
ing on Christ is identified with faith, and His flesh is shown to be 
only a figure for the benefits of His redemption. The occasian — 
the miracle of feeding the thousands with five loaves and two fishes, 
and the consequent pursuit of Christ by the multitude, made it 
very natural that Christ should adopt the figure of an eating of 
food, to represent receiving Him. Verse 29 shows that eating is 
simply believing ; for had Calvin's sense been true, our Saviour 
would not have said so emphatically, that believing was the work 
of God. In verse 35, again, it is implied that the eating is but 
coming; i. e., believing. So, v. 40, 47 with 50. In v. 53, we 
have language which is as destinctive of a spiritual feeding on the 
literal body in the sacraments, as of a corporeal, for in either case 
it would be made to teach the unscriptural doctrine, that a sou\ 



258 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

cannot be saved without the sacraments. In v. 63, our Saviour 
plainly interprets his own meaning. And the whole tenor of 
Scripture (e. g. Matt. 15: 17, 18,) is unfavorable to the concep- 
tion of the moral condition of the soul's being made dependent on 
a reception of corporeal substance. 

Calvin Inconsistent with Results of Unworthy Eating. — 
Last. (See I Cor. 11 : 27, 29.) The destructive effects of un- 
worthy communicating are here described in terms which plainly 
make this michief the counterpart of the benefit which the true 
believer derives, by proper communicating. Now, if this latter is 
an access of spiritual life through a substantial (though spiritual) 
reception of Christ's Person, the former must be a propagation of 
spiritual death, through the poisonous effects of this same Person, 
substantively present to the soul. But says Calvin, with obvious 
correctness, the unbelieving communicant does not get the Person 
of Christ into contact with his soul at all ! The thing he guiltily 
does, is the keeping of Christ away from his soul totally, by his 
unbelief. 

True Nature or Sacramental Efficiency. — Here we may 
appropriately answer the tenth question. We hold that the Lord's 
Supper^is a means of grace ; and the scriptural conception of this 
phrase explains the manner in which this sacrament is efficacious 
to worthy communicants. It sets forth the central truths of re- 
demption, in a manner admirably adapted to our nature sanctified, 
and these truths, applied by the Holy Ghost, are the instruments 
of sanctification and spiritual life, in a manner generically the 
same with, though in degree more energetic, than the written and 
spoken word. So, the guilt of the unbelieving communicant is not 
one inevitably damning ; but it is the guilt of Christ's rejection; 
it is the guilt of doing despight to the crucified Saviour by whom 
he should have been redeemed ; and this, under circumstances of 
peculiar profanity. But the profanation varies according to the 
degree of conscious hypocrisy, and the motive of the act. 

In conclusion of this head, I would remark that all these objec- 
tions to that modified form of the real presence which Calvin held, 
apply a fortiori, to the grosser doctrines of the Lutheran and 
Romanist. The intelligent student can go over the application 
himself. 

Is the Supper a Sacrifice ? Rome's Arguments. — VI. Rome 
asserts most emphatically that the Lord's Supper is a proper and 
literal sacrifice ; in which the elements, having become the very 
body, blood, human spirit, and divinity of Christ, are again offered 
to God upon the altar ; and the transaction is thus a repetition of 
the very sacrifice of the cross, and avails to atone for the sins of 
the living, and of the dead in purgatory. And all this is depend- 
ent on the Priest's intention. After the authority of Ch. Fathers 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 259 

and councils, which we set aside with a simple denial, Rome argues 
from Scripture that Christ was a priest after the order of Mel- 
chizedek ; but he presented as priest, bread and wine as an oblation 
to God, and then made Abraham communicate in it: That Christ 
is a " priest forever," and therefore must have a perpetually recur- 
ring sacrifice to present: That Malachi ( 1 : 11,) predicts the con- 
tinuance of a christian sacrifice among the Gentiles, under the New 
Testament. That the words of institution : " This is my body which 
is broken for you," when taken literally, as they ought to be, imply 
a sacrifice, because the bread, having become the veritable body, 
must be whatever the body is ; but the body is there a sacrifice. 
And that Paul ( I Cor. 10:21,) contrasts the Lord's table with 
that of devils (i. e. idols). But the latter was confessedly a table 
of sacrifice, whence the former must be so. But the true argument 
with Borne for teaching this doctrine, is that of Acts 19 : 25 : they 
" know that by this craft they have their wealth." The great ne- 
cessity of the human soul, awakened by remorse or by the con- 
vincing Spirit of God, is atonement. By making this horrible and 
impious invention, Borne has brought the guilty consciences of 
miserable sinners under her dominion, in order to make merchan- 
dise of their sin and fear. While nothing can transcend the 
unscripturalness of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, I regard 
this of the sacrifice of the Mass as the most impious and mischiev- 
ous of all the heresies of Rome. 

Refutation. — In answer to her pretended scriptural arguments : 
There is not one word of evidence that the bread and wine of Mel- 
chizedek, if even an oblation, were a sacrifice. Does Rome mean 
to represent the sacrament of the Lord's Supper as in exercise 
1400 years before Christ had any body to commemorate ? Christ's 
priesthood is perpetual ; but it is perpetuated, according to He- 
brews, in his function of intercession, which he continually per- 
forms in the Heavenly Sanctuary. And besides : it is a queer 
way to perpetuate His priestly functions, by having a line of other 
priests offer him as the victim of their sacrifices ! Rome replies, 
that her Priest, in offering, acts in Christ's room, and speaks in 
his name. Such impiety is not strange on the part of Rome. We 
set aside the whole dream by demanding, where is the evidence 
that Christ has ever called one of his ministers a priest, or depu- 
tized to him this function 1 The prediction of Malachi is obvi- 
ously to be explained by the remark, that he foretells the prevalence 
of Christian institutions among the Gentiles, in terms and imagery 
borrowed from Jewish rites. The same bungling interpretation 
which Rome makes here, would equally prove from Is. 2 : 1, 4, 
that the great annual feasts at Jerusalem are to be personally at- 
tended by all the people of Europe, Australia, America, &c,; and 
from Is. 56 : 7, that not only the " unbloody offering of the Mass," 
b ut literal burnt offerings shall be presented under the New Test, 



260 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

by the Gentiles. By disproving the transubstantiation of the 
bread, we have already overthrown the argument founded on it. 
And last : it is evidently an overstraining of the Apostle's words, 
to infer from I Cor. 10: 21, that the thing literally eaten at the 
Lord's table must be a literal sacrifice. Since the elements eaten 
are the symbols of the divine sacrifice, there is in this an abundant 
ground for the Apostle's parallel. And moreover, when the Pa- 
gans met after the sacrifice, to eat of the body of the victim, the 
table was not an altar, nor was the act a sacrificial one. 

Heads of Direct Refutation. — The direct refutation of this 
dogma has been so well executed by Calvin, Turretin, and other 
Protestants, that nothing more remains than to collect and state in 
their proper order the more important arguments. The silence of 
the Scripture is a just objection to it; because the burden of 
proof properly lies on those who assert the doctrine. The cir- 
cumstances of the first administration of the Supper exclude all 
sacrificial character. No one will deny that this sacrament must 
bear the same meaning and character in all subsequent repetitions, 
which Christ gave it at first. But on that night it could not be a 
sacrifice, because his sacrifice was not yet made. Christ was as 
yet unslain. Nothing was offered to God ; but on the contrary, 
Christ gave the elements to man : whereas, in a proper sacrifice, 
it is man that offers to God. Not one of the proper traits or 
characteristics of a true sacrifice is present. There is no victim, 
shedding his blood ; and " without the shedding of blood is no 
remission." There is no sacrificial act whatever ; and this is especial- 
ly fatal to Romanists ; because the only oblation to God which can 
by any pretext be found in the history of the institution in Scrip- 
ture, is that of the eucharistic prayer. But, say they, the tran- 
substantiation does not take place till after this, in the pronouncing 
of the words of institution. There is no death and consumption 
of a victim by fire ; for the only thing like a killing is the break- 
ing of the bread : but according to Romanists, this occurred in 
our Saviour's institution, before the transubstantiation. Again : 
the mere fact that the Supper is a Sacrament is incompatible with 
its being a sacrifice ; for the nature of the two is dissimilar. True, 
the passover was both, but this was at different stages. But we 
object with yet more emphasis, that the doctrine is impiously de- 
rogatory to Christ's one priesthood and sacrifice, and to the suffi- 
ciency thereof, as asserted in Scripture. Christ is sole priest. 
(I Tim. 2:5; Heb. 7 : 24 ; 9 : 12.) and He offers one sacrifice, 
which neither needs, nor admits repetition. (Heb. 7 : 27, 9 : 25. 
and 10 : 10, 12, 14 ; 9 : 12, 14 ; 10:1 2, 10 : 26.) 

Private Communions Rejected. Why? — VII. Protestants 
deny the propriety of private communions, because they deny that 
the Supper is a sacrifice. It is a commemoration of Christ's 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 261 

death, and shows forth his death. There should therefore be fel- 
low communicants to whom to show it forth, or at least spectators. 
It is a communion, representing our membership in the common 
body of Christ. Hence to celebrate it when no members are present 
to participate is an abuse. The motive for desiring private commu- 
nions is usually superstitious, and therefore our Church does 
wisely in refusing it. 

Laity entitled to the Cup. — VIII. The grounds on which 
Rome withholds the cup from the laity may be seen stated in the 
Council of Trent, and cited in Dick. They are too trivial to need 
refutation. It is enough to say that the assertion that the bread 
by itself is a whole sacrament, because the blood is in the body, 
is false. For it is the very nature of the Lord's Supper to signify 
that the blood is not in the body, having been poured out from it 
in death. We might justly ask : Why is not the bread alone suffi- 
cient for the priests also, if it is a whole sacrament ? The'outrage 
upon Christ's institute is peculiarly glaring, because the injunction 
to give the cup to the communicants is as clear and positive as to 
observe the sacrament at all. And our Saviour, as though fore- 
seeing the abuse, in Mark 14 : 23, and Matt. 26 : 27, has emphati- 
cally declared that all who eat are also to drink. This innovation 
of Rome is comparatively modern ; being not more against the 
word of God than against the voice and usage of Christian an- 
tiquity. It presents one of the strongest examples of her insolent 
arrogance both towards her people and God. The true motive, 
doubtless, is, to exalt the priesthood into a superior caste. 

IX. For the answer to this, see Lectures on the Sacraments in 
General. Qu. 10. 



2 62 SYLABUS AND NOTES 



LECTURE LXVIL 



SYLLABUS. 

DEATH OP BELIEVERS. 

1. Why does death befall justified persons? Dick, Lecture 80. Knapp's 
Theol., § 147 to 150. 

2. Eeview the arguments for the immortality of the soul. Dick, as above. 
Butler's Analogy. Pt. I. Breckinridge's Theology, Vol. I., Bk. I., Ch. 6. 

3. What are the benefits which believers receive at death ; and is entire sancti- 
fication one of them ? Dick, Lecture 81. Knapp as above. 

4. Is there any other place than heaven or hell, (such as that called Hades, 
Limbus Fatrum, &c.,) where any souls are detained? Turretin, Loc. XII. 
Qu. 11. 

5. Is the soul conscious and active between death and the resurrection ? Dick, 
Lect. 81. See on the whole, Bidgeley, Qu. 85, 86. 

1. Death a penal evil. Why then inflicted on the justi- 
fied ? Death is undoubtedly a penal evil ; and not merely a natu- 
ral law, as Socinians and Pelagians teach. This we have already 
shown by the Bible, (Gen. 2:17, 3 : 17-19, 5:3; Rom. 5 : 12", 
14,) and by the obvious reasoning that the benevolence and righte- 
ousness, with the infinite power of God, would combine to prevent 
any suffering to his moral creatures while free from guilt. Man 
enters life now, subject to the tohole penalty of death, including 
temporal physical evils, spiritual death, and bodily death ; and 
this is the consequence of Adam's fall through our federal con- 
nexion with him. From spiritual death, all believers are delivered 
at their regeneration. Physical evils and bodily death remain ; 
and inasmuch as the latter is a most distinctive and emphatic re- 
tribution for sin, the question is, how it comes to be inflicted on 
those who are absolutely justified in Christ. On the one hand, 
bodily death is a penal infliction. On the other hand, we have 
taught that believers are justified from all guilt, and are required 
to render no penal satisfaction whatever. (Rom. 5:1; Heb. 10 : 
14, &c.) Yet all believers die ! 

False and true answers. — Now this question is very inade- 
quately met by such views as these : That this anomaly is no 
greater than many others in the divine dealings; e. g., the con- 
tinuance of imperfection and indwelling sin so many years in be- 
lievers, or their subjection to the malice of evil men and demons. 
That the destruction of the body is necessary to a perfect sancti- 
fication, a thing shown to be untrue in the cases of Enoch, Elijah, 
the human soul of Christ, and all the believers who shall be on 
earth at the last consummation ; or, that the natural law of mor- 
tality, and the rule of God's kingdom, that men must " walk by 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 263 

faith, not by sight," would both be violated, if so visible a differ- 
ence were placed between saints and sinners as the entire exemp- 
tion of the former from bodily death. These are partial explana- 
tions. The true answer is, that although believers are fully justi- 
fied, yet according to that plan of grace which God has seen fit to 
adopt, bodily death is a necessary and wholesome chastisement for 
the good of the believer's soul. If this postulate can be shown 
to be correct, the occurrence of death to the justified man will 
fall into the same class with all other paternal chastisements, and 
will receive the same explanation. 

Ground and Nature of Chastisements. — Let us then recall 
some principles which were established in our defence of our view 
of the Atonement against Romanists, &c. First. A chastisement, 
while God's motive in it is only benevolent, does not cease to be, 
to the believer, a natural evil. We may call it a blessing in dis- 
guise; but the christian smarting under it feels that if this lan- 
guage means that it is not a real evil, it is a mere play upon words. 
The accurate statement is, that God wisely and kindly exercises 
in chastisements his divine prerogative of bringing good out of 
evil. Bodily death does not cease to be to the believer a real 
natural evil in itself, and to be feared and felt as such. Second. 
Hence chastisement is a means of spiritual benefit appropriate only 
to sinning children of God. It would not be just, for instance, 
that God should adopt chastisements as a means to advance Gabriel, 
who never had any guilt, to some higher stage of sanctified capa- 
cities and blessedness ; because where there is no guilt there is no 
suffering. Third. Still, God's motive in chastising the believer is not 
at all retributive, but wholly beneficent ; whereas his retributions 
of the guilty are intended, not primarily to benefit them, but to 
satisfy righteousness. Here then is the distinctive difference be- 
tween Rome and us : that we hold, while the sufferings endured in 
chastisements have a reference to our sinful and guilty condition, 
in the believer's case they are neither paid by him, nor received by 
God, as any penal satisfaction whatever for guilt, that satisfaction 
is wholly paid by our surety. Heb. 12:6-10; Rom. 8 : 18-28 ; 
2 Cor. 4: 17; with Rom. 8:33; Ps. 103:12; Micah 7: 19. 
Whereas Rome teaches that penitential sufferings of believers go 
to complete the actual penal satisfaction for the reatum poena,, left 
incomplete by Christ. 

Fourth. — How compatible with satisfaction for sin. — The 
use of such means of sanctification is compatible with divme jus- 
tice, although an infinite vicarious satisfaction is made for our 
guilt by our surety, because, as we saw, a vicarious satisfaction is 
not a commercial equivalent for our guilt ; a legal tender such as 
brings our Divine Creditor under a righteous obligation to cancel 
our whole indebtedness. But his acceptance of it as a legal satis- 



264 SYLABUS AND NOTES 

faction was, on his part, an act of pure grace ; and therefore the 
acceptance acquits us just so far as, and no farther than, God is 
pleased to allow it. And we learn from His word that he has been 
pleased to accept it just thus far ; that the believer shall be re- 
quired to pay no more penal satisfaction to the broken law ; yet 
shall be liable to such suffering of chastisements as shall be whole- 
some for his own improvement, and appropriate to his sinning con- 
dition. 

Bodily Death an Edifying Chastisement.— Now then, does 
bodily death subserve the purposes of a wholesome and sanctifying 
chastisement ? I answer, most eminently. The prospect of it 
serves, from the earliest day when it begins to stir the sinner's 
conscience to a wholesome seriousness, through all his convictions, 
conversion, Christian warfare, to humble the proud soul, to mortify 
carnality, to check pride, to foster spiritual mindedness. It is the 
fact that sicknesses are premonitions of death, which make them 
active means of sanctification. Bereavements through the death 
of friends form another valuable class of disciplinary sufferings. 
Nqav that death may be actually in prospect, death must ac- 
tually occur. And when the closing scene approaches, no doubt 
in every case where the believer is conscious, the pains of its ap- 
proach, the solemn thoughts and emotions it suggests are all used 
by the Holy Ghost as powerful means of sanctification to ripen 
the soul rapidly for Heaven. I doubt not, that when we take into 
view the whole moral influences of the life-long prospect of our own 
deaths, the prospect and occurrence of bereavement by death of 
friends, the pungent efficiency given to sickness by its connexion 
with death, as well as the actual influences of the closing scene, 
we shall see that all other chastisements put together, are far less 
efficacious in checking inordinate affection and sanctifying the 
soul : yea, that without this, there would be no efficacious chas- 
tisement at all left in the world. A race of sinners must be a 
race of mortals ; Death is the only check (of the nature of means) 
potent enough to prevent depravity from breaking out with a 
power which would make the state of the world perfectly intole- 
rable ! 

Death 'a means of Glory to Saint, Unmixed Curse to Sin- 
ner. — II. Yet, as the afflictions of the righteous differ much from 
the torments of the wicked, this is peculiarly true of their deaths. 
To the impenitent man, death is full of the sting of sin. In the 
case of the Saint, this sting is extracted by redemption. There 
may not be the abounding triumphs of spiritual joy : but if the 
believer is conscious, he usually enjoys a peace, which controls 
and calms the agitations of the natural feelings recoiling from 
death. In the case of the sinner, the horror of dying is made 
up of two sets of feelings, the instinctive love of life, with the 



SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 265 

natural affections which tie him to the earth; and evil con- 
science with dread of future retributions. And the latter is often 
predominant in the sinner's anguish. But in the case of the Saint 
it is removed ; and death is only an evil in the apprehension of 
the former feelings. Second: to the sinner, death is the begin- 
ning of his utter misery ; to the Saint it is the usher, (a dreaded 
one indeed) into his real blessedness. By it the death in sins, 
and bondage of depravity is fixed upon the sinner irrevocably : 
but the saint is delivered by it from all his indAvelling sins. Death 
removes the sinner forever from God, from partial gospel privi- 
leges and communions. But to the Saint it is the means of break- 
ing down the veil, and introducing him into the full fruition and 
vision of God. 

Benefits Received by Saint at Death — 1. Complete Sanctifi- 
cation. — See Shorter Cat. Qu. 37. Three benefits are here men- 
tioned as received from Christ at the believers' death : forget, 
sanctification, immediate entrance into glory, and the prospect of 
a bodily resurrection. 

We take up here, the first, postponing the others for separate 
discussion ; and assuming, for the time, the implied truth of the 
immortality of the soul. The complete sanctification of believers 
at death would hardly be denied by any who admitted that their 
souls entered at once into the place of our Saviour's glorified resi- 
dence, and of God's visible throne. It is those who teach a sepa- 
rate state, a transmigration, or Hades, or purgatory, or sleep in 
the grave, who deny the immediate sanctification of souls. For 
the attributes of God and heaven are such as obviously to require 
perfect purity from all who dwell there. Let the student bear 
this in mind, and have in view the truth to be' hereafter established, 
that the souls of believers "do immediately pass into glory." The 
place is holy, and debars the approach of all moral impurity. (Rev. 
21:27.) The inhabitants, the holy angels are pure, and could not 
appropriately admit the companionship of one tainted with indwell- 
ing sin. Three : they now fly forth to "minister to them who 
shall be the heirs of salvation ;" but this is not a companionship. 
The king of that world is too pure to receive sinners to his bosom. 
He does indeed condescend by his Holy Ghost into the polluted 
breasts of sinners on earth ; but this is a far different thing from 
a public, full and final admission of sin into the place of his holi- 
ness. See I. Pt. 1: 15, 16; Ps. 5: 4; 15:2; Is. 6: 5. The blessed- 
ness of the redeemed is incompatible with any remaining imperfec- 
tion (Rev. 21: 4). Eor wherever there is sin, there must be suffer- 
ing. And last, this glorious truth is plainly asserted in the word 
of God. (Heb. 12: 23 ; Eph. 5: 27 ; I. John 3: 2.) 



266 OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 

Made Feasible by Body's Death. — Bow this sanctification is 
wrought, we may not tell. Recall the remark made when sanc- 
tification was discussed: that it is not mysticism, nor gnosticism, 
nor asceticism, to ascribe its completion to our release from the 
body, as a convenient occasion. Bodily appetites are the occasions 
of the larger part of most men's sins : as the bodily members are 
the instruments of all their overt sins. How natural, then, that 
when these are removed, God should finally remove sin. The 
agent of this work is still, no doubt, the Holy Spirit. 

Old and New Testaments teach Immobtality. — III. I have 
already remarked that all these views presuppose that immortality 
which is brought to light in the gospel. It has always seemed to 
me that it treats the question of man's immortality, as it does that 
of God's existence, assumes it as an undisputed postulate. Hence 
the debate urged by Warburton and his opposers, whether Moses 
taught a future existence, seems to me preposterous. To dis- 
pute that he did, flies into the very teeth of Scripture. (Matt. 
22:32; Heb. 11:16, 26; and in Pentateuch, Deut. 18: 9-12. Gen. 
5:22, 24; Gen. 37:35,15:15,25:8,35:29; Numb. 20: 24,49:33.) 
All religion and even all morality implies a future existence. But 
our Saviour, whose purpose it was to reaffirm the truths of Old 
Testament Revelation, and of natural Religion, which had been 
obscured by the perverse skepticism of men, does teach man's im- 
mortality "with peculiar distinctness and fullness. The reader may 
consult for instance, (Matt. 10:28; Luk. 16: 19, 20:38; Matt. 
25, end; Jno. 5:24, 8:51, II, 12:24; 2 Cor. 5: 1-10; 1 Cor. 15; 
&c. This may perhaps be a part of the Apostle's meaning, when 
he says, (2 Tim. 1: 10,) that Christ "hath brought life and im- 
mortality to light in the gospel." But it would certainly be a 
great abuse of his meaning, to understand from him that Christ 
was the first adequately to teach that there is an immortal exis- 
tence. Paul speaks rather, as the contest clearly shows, ("hath 
abolished death,") of spiritual life, and a happy immortality, which 
Christianity procures. And it is the glory of the religion of the 
Bible to have clearly made this known to man. 

Which is that of Soul and Body. — It may be well to note, 
that the immortality of the Bible is that of the whole man, body 
and soul ; and herein God's word transcends entirely all the guesses 
of natural reason. And this future existence implies the con- 
tinuance of our consciousness, memory, mental, and personal 
identity ; of the same soul in the same body, (after the resurrec- 
tion). There must be also the essential and characteristic exer- 
cises of our reasonable and moral nature, with an unbroken con- 
tinuity. For if the being who is to live, and be affected with 
weal or woe by my conduct here, is not the I, who now act, and 
hope, and fear, that future existence is of small moment to me. 



SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 267 

Rational Arguments Rr viewed. — It may not be amiss here, 
to review the amount of light which natural reason has been able 
to collect concerning man's future existence. Since the resurrec- 
tion of the body is purely a doctrine of revelation, of which rea- 
son could not have any surmise (witness the Pagan philosophies,) 
the question must be discussed rationally as a question concerning 
the immortality of the soul only. All that natural experience 
ever sees of the body is its death, dissolution, and seemingly irre- 
parable destruction. But since the soul is the true seat of sensa- 
tion, knowledge, emotion, merit, and will, the assertion of its im- 
mortality is far the most important part of the doctrine of man's 
future existence. The various opinions of men on this subject, 
who had no revelation, may be seen stated in Knapp's Theol. § 149, 
viz : materialism (Epicurus,) transmigrations. (Brahmin's Pyth- 
agoras and some Jews,) re-absorption into the II. d. v. (Stoic 
Pantheists,) and separate disembodied immortality (Plato, &c). 
Among the many reasonings advanced by ancients and moderns, 
these following seem to me to have probable weight. 

(a.) The consensus Populorum, especially when we consider 
how naturally man's sensuous nature and evil conscience might 
incline him to neglect the truth. 

(b.) The analogy of the fact that man and all other living things 
obviously experience several stages, first the foetus, then infant, 
then adult. It is natural to expect other stages. (Butler.) 

(c.) A present existence raises a presumption of continued ex- 
istence, (as the sun's rising, that it will rise again) unless there 
is something in the body's dissolution to destroy the probability. 
But. is there ? No. For body sleeps while soul wakes. Body 
may waste, fatten, be amputated, undergo flux of particles, loss 
of sensible organs, while soul remains identical. In sensation, 
the soul only uses the organs of sense, as one might feel with a 
stick, or see through a glass. The more essential operations of 
spirit, conception, memory, comparison, reasoning, &c, are carried 
on wholly independent of the body, whence we conclude that the 
essential subsistence of the soul is independent of the body.— 
(Butler.) 

(d.) The soul is simple, a monad, as is proved by consciousness. 
But there is not a particle of analogy, in the universe, to show 
that it is probable God will annihilate any substance he has 
created. The only instances of destruction we see, are those of 
disorganization of the complex. (Butler; Brown.) 

(e.) The soul has higher powers than any of God's terrestrial 
works, strange that the brute earth, and even elephants, eagles, 
and geese should be more long-lived ! It has a capacity for men- 
tal and moral development beyond any which it attains in this life. 
God has ordained that all things else should fulfill the ends of their 



268 OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 

existence. It can know and glorify God : Strange that God, 
making all things for his own glory, should make his rational ser- 
vants such that the honour derived from them must utterly ter- 
minate. 

(f.) Conscience points direct to a superior moral Ruler, and a 
future existence, with its retributions. 

(g.) The unequal distribution of retributions here on earth, 
coupled with our confidence in the righteousness of God, compel 
a belief in a future existence, where all shall be equalized. . 

Is there an Intermediate State. — IV. We have asserted it, 
as the doctrine of the Bible, that the souls of believers do pass 
immediately into glory. In opposition to this, there are some, 
among the professed believers in the Bible, who hold some kind of 
intermediate state, in which the souls of all, saints and sinners, 
are detained. The opinions of this kind may be ranked under 
three heads : 1 . That of the Romish Purgatory, which has been 
already discussed. 2. That of the Jewish Hades, held by some 
Rabbins ; and 3d. That of the ancient Socinians and modern 
Thomasites, who hold that the soul will sleep unconscious until 
the body's resurrection. The second of these opinions will be the 
subject of the present section and the third, of the fifth and last. 

Jewish Doctrine. — The Jewish doctrine seems to have been, 
that the souls of departed men do not pass at once into their ulti- 
mate abode ; but into the invisible world, Hades, sheol, where they 
await their final doom, until the final consummation, in a state of 
partial and negative blessedness and misery, respectively. This 
Hades has two departments, that of the blessed, Paradise, or the 
Bosom of Abraham, and that of the lost, Tartarus. But this 
Paradise is far short of the heavens proper in blessedness, as well 
as different in locality, and this Tartarus far less intolerable than 
Gehenna, or hell proper. The following passages were supposed 
by them to favor this opinion : Gen. 37 : 35, 42 : 38, " Go down 
to Hades;" 1 Samuel 28 : 11, 14 and 19, "An old man cometh 
wp," "Be with me to-morrow;" Zech. 9:11, where it is sup- 
posed the souls are in a place like a dry pit ; Psalms 6:5, 88 : 
10, 115 : 17, 143 : 3, where the state of the dead is described 
seemingly as a senseless and negative one. And some Papists 
have supposed that their kindred notion of a Limbus patrum found 
support in Luke 16 : 23 end. 

Disproved. — No better disproof of this doctrine of a Hades 
need be sought than that of Luke 16 : 22, 23. It is manifest that 
being in Abraham's bosom is being in Heaven. Compare Matt. 
8:11. Then, rewards and punishments are already begun ; and 
the torments of Dives are as characteristic of Hell proper (" tor- 
mented in this flame") as any others described in Scripture. 



SYLLABUS AND NOTES £69 

Second. The history of the transfiguration proves that Moses 
and Elijah are in glory. It may be said that these are peculiar 
cases, and especially the latter, who is still in the body ; but here 
we have the principle stated, that some redeemed souls have passed 
immediately into glory. And the revelations made to John in the 
Apocalypse ground a similar argument ; because the souls of the 
redeemed are there represented as before the throne ; and however 
figurative such language may be, it surely means something cor- 
responding to the figure. 

Third. We argue from the case of the penitent thief. Christ 
promises : This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. This 
means Heaven proper. Cf. 2 Cor. 12 : 2-4 ; Rev. 2 : 7. 

Once more : In the language of Paul, to be unclothed is equiva- 
lent to being clothed upon with our heavenly house, 2 Cor. 5 : 4, 
and to be absent from the flesh is to be present with the Lord, 2 
Cor. 5 : 8. 

The Soul conscious and active during- the Body's sleep. — V. 
The last of the three opinions may be refuted by the same argu- 
ments just used upon the IVth. It only remains to add the fol- 
lowing from the language of Stephen, Acts 7 : 59, and of Paul, 
Phil. 1 : 23. 

The true ego, the soul has no concern with the grave. Here is 
inexpressible consolation. 



270 OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 

LECTURE LXYIII. 



SYLLABUS. 

THE RESURRECTION. 

1. What were the opinions of the ancient Heathens, and what of the Jews, on 
this subject ? Does nature furnish any analogy in favor of it ? Dr. Chris- 
tian Knapp, §151. Dick, Lect. 82. 

2. State the precise meaning of the Scripture doctrine. What will be the 
qualities of our resurrection bodies ? Turretin Loc. xx., Qu. 1, 2 and 9. 
Knapp, § 152, 153. Dick, Lect. 82. 

3. Will the resurrection bodies be the same which men have now ? In what 
sense the same ? Discuss objections. Turretin, Qu. 2. Dick, Lect. 82. 
Watson's Theo. Inst., chap. XXIX. 

4. Prove the doctrine of the Resurrection, from the Old Testament ; from the 
New. Turretin, Qu. 1 ; Dick, Lect. 82. 

5. How is the resurrection of the Saints, and how is that of sinners, related to 
the resurrection of Christ? Dick, Lect. 82. Breckinridge Theol., Vol. 1, 
as above. 

6. What will be the time ? Will there be a double resurrection ? Turretin, 
Qu. 3. Dick, Lect. 82. Scott, Com. on Rev., ch. 20th. Brown's Second 
Advent. 

See on whole, Ridgeley, Qu. 87 ; Geo. Bush on the Resurrection ; Davies' 
Sermons ; Young's Last Day. 

Pagan Theories embrace no Resurrection. — I. The definite 
philosophic speculations among the ancient Heathen all discarded 
the doctrine of a proper resurrection ; so that the Bible stands 
alone in acknowledging the share of the body in man's immor- 
tality. It is true that the poets (Hesiod, Homer, Virgil) express- 
ing the popular and traditionary belief, in this case, as in that of 
the soul's immortality, less incorrect than the philosopher's spec- 
ulations, speak of the future life as a bodily one, of members, 
food, labours, &c, in Tartarus and Elysium. But it is difficult to 
say how far these sensuous representations of the future existence 
w T ere due to mere inaccuracy and grossness of conception, or how 
far to perspicuous ideas of a bodily existence conjoined with the 
spiritual. The Brahmins speak of many transmigrations and in- 
carnations, of their deified men ; but none of them are resurrec- 
tions proper. The Pythagoreans and Platonists dreamed of an 
ochema, an ethereal, semi-spiritual investment, which the glorified 
spirit, after its metempsychosis are finished, develops for itself. 
The pantheistic sects, whether Budhists or Stoics, of course 
utterly rejected the idea of a bodily existence after death, when 
they denied even a personal existence of the soul. 

What Jews believed it. — But the Jews, with the exception of 
the Saducees and Essenes, seem to have held firmly to the doctrine.' 
Nor can I see any evidence, except the prejudice of hypothesis 
and fancy, for the notion of Knapp, and many Germans, that their 
belief in this doctrine dated only from the time of the Babylonish 



SYLLABUS AND NOTES 271 

captivity. There is no historical evidence. If the proof-texts of 
the earlier Hebrew Scriptures are perversely explained away, and 
those of the Maccabees, &c, admitted, there is some show of 
plausibility. But it is far better reasoning to say that this unques- 
tioning belief in the doctrine by the Jews, is evidence that they 
understood their earlier as well as their later Scriptures to teach 
it. The evidence of the state of opinion among them, and espe- 
cially among the Pharisees, is found in their uninspired writings : 
2 Mac. 7: 9, &c, 12 : 43, 45; Josephus and Philo, and in New 
Testament allusions to their ideas. See Matt. 22, Luke 20, John 
11 : 24, Acts 23 : 6, 8, Heb. 11 : 35. But the doctrine was a 
subject of mocking skepticism to most of the speculative Pagans ; 
as the interlocutor in Minutius Felix, Octavius, Pliny, jr., Lu- 
cian, Celsus, &c. See Acts 17 : 32 ; 26 : 6-8 ; 23 : 24. 

No Natural Proofs of it. — Hence, we may infer, that the 
doctrine of the resurrection is purely one of revelation. Analo- 
gies and probable arguments have been sought in favor of it, as 
by the early Fathers, and later writers ; but while some rise in 
dignity above the fable of the Phoenix, none of them can claim to 
be demonstrations. The fact that all nature moves in cycles, re- 
storing a state of things again which had passed away ; that the 
trees bud after the sterility and mimic death of winter ; that 
moons wax again after they have waned ; that sun and 
stars, after setting in the west, rise again in the east ; that 
seeds germinate and reproduce their kind; can scarcely bo 
called a proper analogy ; for in all these cases there is no proper- 
destruction, by a disorganization of atoms, but a mere return of 
the same complex body, without a moment's breach of its organic 
unity, into the same state in which it had previously been. If 
we were perfectly honest, we should rather admit that the proper 
analogies of nature are against the doctrine : for when a seed ger- 
minates, that particular seed is produced no more ; there is, in 
what comes from it, only a generic, not a numerical identity. 
"When the tree really perishes, its mould and moisture and gases 
are never reconstructed into that same tree, but pass irrevocably 
into other vegetable forms. Dick supposes that the argument said 
to have been stated B. C. 450, by Phocylides, the Milesian, is more 
plausible : that inasmuch as God's wisdom led him to introduce a 
genus of rational beings, of body and spirit combined, the same 
wisdom will always lead him to perpetuate that kind. But if, after 
the soul's departure, the body were never reanimated, man would 
become simply an inferior angel, and the genus would be oblitera- 
ted. To this, also, we may reply : that this argument is not valid 
until it is also shown that the wisdom which called this genus of 
complex beings into existence will not be satisfied by its temporary 
continuance as a separate genus. But this we can never prove by 



272 OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 

mere reason. For instance : the same reasoning would prove 
equally well, both an immortality and a bodily resurrection, for 
any of the genera of brutes ! Another argument is presented by 
Turrettin from the justice of God, which, if possessed of feeble 
weight by itself, at least has the advantage of harmonizing with 
Bible representations. It is, that the justice of God is more ap- 
propriately satisfied, by punishing and rewarding souls in the very 
bodies, and with the whole personal identity, with which they 
sinned (Comp. 2 Cor. 5 : 10) or obeyed. 

True Meaning oe Resurrection. — II. In Scripture the image of 
a resurrection, Anastasis, is undoubtedly used sometimes in a fig- 
urative sense, to describe regeneration, (John. 5 : 25 ; Eph. 5 : 6,) 
and sometimes, restoration from calamity and captivity to prosper- 
ity and joy. (Ezek. 37: 12; Is. 26: 19.) But it is equally certain 
that the words are intended to be used in a literal sense, of the 
restoration of the same body that dies to life, by its reunion to the 
soul. This then is the doctrine. For when the resurrection of 
the dead (nekrown) of those that are in their graves, of those that 
sleep in the dust of the earth, is declared, the sense is unequivo- 
cal. Without at this time particularizing Scripture proofs, we 
assert that they mean to describe a bodily existence as literally as 
when they speak of man's soul in this life, as residing in a body ; 
and this, though wonderfully changed in qualities, the same 
body, in the proper, honest sense of the word same, which the 
soul laid down at death. This resurrection will embrace all the 
individuals of the human race, good and bad, except those whose 
bodies have already passed into heaven, and those of the last gen- 
eration, who will be alive on the earth at the last trump. But on 
the bodies of these the resurrection change will pass, though they 
do not die. The signal of this resurrection is to be the " last 
trump," an expression probably taken from the transactions at 
Sinai: (Exod. 19:16, 19; Cf. Heb. 12:26,) which may very 
possibly be, some literal audible summons, sounded through the 
whole atmosphere of the world. But the agent will be Christ, by 
his direct and almighty power with the Holy Ghost. 

Qualities of Resurrection Bodies. — The qualities of the res- 
urrection bodies of the Saints are described in I Cor. 15: 42, 50, 
with as much particularity, probably, as we can comprehend. 
Whereas the body is buried in a state of dissolution; it is raised 
indissoluble, no longer liable to disorganization, by separation of 
particles, either becaut e protected therefrom by the special power 
of God, or by the absence of assailing chemical forces. It is 
buried, disfigured and loathsome. It will be raised beautiful. 
Since it is a literal material body that is raised, it is far the most 
natural to suppose that the glory predicated of it, is literal, mate- 
rial beauty. As to its kind, see Matt. 13: 43 ; Phil. 3:21, with 



SYLLABUS AND NOTES 273 

Rev. 1 : 13, 14. Some may think that It is unworthy of God's 
redemption to suppose it conferring an advantage so trivial and 
sensuous as personal beauty. But is not this a remnant of that 
Gnostic or Neo Platonic asceticism, which cast off the body itself 
as too worthless to be an object of redeeming power ? We know 
that sanctified affections now always beautify and ennoble the 
countenance. See Exod. 34 : 29, 30. And if God did not deem 
it too trivial for his attention, to clothe the landscape %vith verdure, 
to cast every form of nature in lines of grace, to dye the skies 
with purest azure, and to paint the sun and stars with splendour, 
in order to gratify the eyes of his children here, we may assume 
that he will condescend to beautify even the bodies of his Saints, 
in that world where all is made perfect. Next, the body is buried 
in weakness ; it has just given the crowning evidence of feeble- 
ness, by yielding to death. It will be raised in immortal vigour, 
so as to perform its functions with perfect facility, and without 
fatigue. 

" Natural Body " and "Spiritual Body;" What ? — And last ; 
it is buried an animal body ; i. e., this is the character it has hitherto 
had. The Soma Psuchikon is unfortunately translated " natural 
body" in the English version. The Apostle here evidently avails 
himself of the popular Greek distinction, growing out of the curren- 
cy of Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy, to express his distinc- 
tion, without meaning to endorse their psychology. The Soma 
Pneumatikon is evidently the body as characterized chiefly by its 
animal functions. What these are, there can be little doubt, if 
we keep in mind the established Greek sense of the Psuche, viz : 
the functions of the appetite and sense. Then the Soma Pneuma- 
tikon must mean not a body now material, as the Swedenborgians, 
&c, claim (a positive contradiction and impossibility), but a body 
actuated only by processes of intellection and moral affection ; for 
these, Paul's readers supposed, were the proper processes of the 
Pneuma, or Nous. But the Apostle, v. v. 44, 50, defines his own 
meaning. To show that " there is an animal body, and a spiritual 
foody ;" that it is no fancy nor impossibility, he points to the fact 
that such have already existed, in the case of Adam and his natu- 
ral seed, and of Christ. And as we were federally connected, 
first with Adam, and then with Christ, we bear first the animal 
body, (Adam's) and then the spiritual (Christ's). And Christ's 
humanity also, during his humiliation, passed through that first 
stage, to the second ; because he assumed all the innocent weak- 
nesses and affections of a literal man. Our Soma Pneumatikon 
then, is defined to be what Christ's glorified body now in Heaven 
is. Complete this definition by what we find in Matt. 22 : 30. 
The spiritual body then, is one occupied and actuated only by the 
spiritual processes of a sanctified soul ; but which neither smarts 



274 OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 

with pain, nor feels fatigue, nor has appetites, nor takes any lite- 
ral, material supplies therefor. 

Resurrection Bodies of Sinners. — It seems every way reason- 
able to suppose that while the bodies of the wicked will be raised 
without the glory or splendour of the Saints, they also will be no 
longer animal bodies, and will be endued with immortal vigour 
to endure. 

Identity or the Bodies Raised Proofs. — III. The Scriptures 
plainly teach that our resurrection bodies will be the bodies we 
now have, only modified ; that is, that they will be substantially 
identical. This follows from the divine justice, so far as it prompts 
God to work a resurrection. For if we have not the very body 
in which we sinned, when called to judgment, that " every man 
may receive the things done in the body," there will be no rele- 
vancy in the punishment, so far as it falls on the body. The same 
truth follows from the believer's union to Christ. If he redeemed 
our bodies, must they not be the very ones g we have here ? (I Cor. 
3:16; 6:15). It appears evidently from Christ's resurrection, 
which is the earnest, exemplar, and pledge of ours. For in his 
case, the body that was raised was the very one that died and 
was buried. But if, in our case, the body that dies is finally dis- 
sipated, and another is reconstructed, there is small resemblance 
indeed to our Saviour's resurrection. This leads us to remark, 
fourth, that the very words Anistemi, Anastasis plainly imply the 
rearing of the same thing that fell; otherwise there is an abuse of 
language in applying them to a proper creation. Last, the lan- 
guage of Scripture in Dan. 12: 2; John 5 : 28, 29 ; I Cor. 15: 
21, 53, 54 : I Thess. 4:16; it is that which is " in the dust of 
the earth," " in the Mnemeia" the Nekroi, corpses, which is 
raised. It is "this mortal" which "puts on immortality." 
From the days of the Latin Fathers, and their speculative Pagan 
opposers, certain objections have been pompously raised against 
such a resurrection, as though it were intrinsically absurd. They 
may be found reproduced by Geo. Bush on the Resurrection. 

Objection from Wonderfulness, Answered. — The general ob- 
jection is from the incredible greatness of the work; that since 
the particles that composed human bodies are scattered asunder by 
almost every conceivable agency, fire, winds, waters, birds and 
beasts of prey, mingled with the soil of the fields, and dissolved 
in the waters of the ocean, it is unreasonable to expect they will be 
assembled again. We reply, (reserving the question whether a 
proper corporeal identity implies the presence of all the constitu- 
ent particles, of which more anon), that this objection is founded 
only on a denial of God's omnipotence, omniscience, and almighty 
power. The work of the resurrection does indeed present a most 
wondrous and glorious display of divine power. But to God all 



SYLLABUS AND NOTES 275 

things are easy. We may briefly reply, that to all who believe in 
a special Providence, there is a standing and triumphant answer 
visible to our eyes. It is in the existence of our present bodies. 
Are they not formed by God ? Are they not also formed from. 
" the dust of the earth ?" And it is not any one hundred and fifty 
pounds of earth, which God moulds into a body of that weight; 
but there is a most Avonderful, extensive, and nice selection of 
particles, where a million of atoms are assorted over and rejected, 
for one that is selected ; and that frorn thousands of miles. In 
my body there are atoms, probably, that came from Java (in 
coffee), and from Cuba or Manilla (in sugar), and from the western 
prairies (in pork), and from the Savannahs of Carolina (in rice), 
and from the green hills of Western Virginia (in beef and butter), 
and from our own fields (in fruits). Do you say, the selection and 
aggregation have been accomplished gradually, by sundry natural 
laws of vegetation and nutrition ? Yea, but what are natural 
laws 1 Only regular modes of God's working through matter 
which he has in his wisdom proposed to himself. If God actually 
does this thing now, why may he not do another thing just like it, 
only more quickly ? 

Physical Objection - Answered. — But an objection supposed 
to be still more formidable, is derived from the supposed flux of 
particles in the human body, and the cases in which particles which 
belonged to one man at his death, become parts of the structure 
of another man's body, through cannibalism, or the derivation by 
beasts from the mould enriched with human dust, which beasts are 
in turn consumed by men, &c, &c. Now, since one material atom 
cannot be in two places at the same time, the resurrection of the 
same bodies, say they, is a physical impossibility. And if the flux 
of particles be admitted, which shall the man claim, as composing 
his bodily identity ; those he had first, or those he had last : or all 
he ever had? To the first of these questions, we reply, that there 
is no evidence that a particle of matter composing a portion of a 
human corpse, has ever been assimilated by another human body. 
It is only assumed that it may be so. But now, inasmuch as the 
truth of Scripture has been demonstrated by an independent 
course of moral evidences, and it asserts the same body shall be 
raised, if there is, indeed, any difficulty about this question of the 
atoms, the burden of proof lies upon the objector; and he must 
demonstrate that the difficulty exists, and is insuperable. It is not 
sufficient merely to surmise that it may exist. Now, I repeat, a 
surmise is good enough to meet a surmise. Let me assume this 
hypothesis, that it may be a physiological law, that a molecule, 
once assimilated and vitalized by a man (or other animal), under- 
goes an influence which renders it afterwards incapable of assimila- 
tion by another being of the same species. This, indeed, is not 



276 OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 

without plausible eyidence from analogy, witness, for instance: the 
fertility of a soil to another crop, when a proper rotation is pur- 
sued, which had become barren as to the first crop too .long 
repeated. But, if there is any such law, the ease supposed by the 
objector against the resurrection, neyer occurs. But, second: in 
answer to both objections, it can never be shown that the numeri- 
cal identity of all the constituent atoms is necessary to that bodily 
sameness, which is asserted by the Bible of our resurrection bodies. 
We are under no forensic obligation whatever, to define precisely 
in what that sameness consists, but take our stand here, that the 
Bible, being written in popular language, when it says our resur- 
rection bodies will be the same, it means precisely what popular 
consciousness and common language apprehend, when it is said my 
body at forty is the same body grown stronger, which I had at fif- 
teen. Let that meaning be whatever it may be, if this doctrine of 
Xhe flux of particles, and this possibility of a particle that once 
belonged to one man becoming a part of another, prove that our 
resurrection bodies cannot be the same that died, they equally 
prove that my body cannot now be the body I had some years ago, 
for that flax, if there is any truth in it, has already occurred ; and 
there is just as much probability that I have been nourished with 
a few particles from a potatoe, manured with the hair of some 
man who is still living, as that two men will both claim the same 
particles at the resurrection. But my consciousness tells me [the 
most demonstrative of all proof], that I have had the same body 
all the time, so that, if these famous objections disprove a resur- 
rection, they equally contradict consciousness. You will notice 
that I propound no theory as to what constitutes precisely our 
consciousness of bodily identity, as it is wholly unnecessary to our 
argument that I should ; and that I do not undertake to define 
precisely how the resurrection body will be constituted in this par- 
ticular; and thi$ is most proper for me, because the Bible pro- 
pounds no theory on this point. 

Bodily Identity During Life, What ? — But if curiosity leads 
you to inquire, I answer that it appears to me our consciousness 
of bodily identity [as to a limb, or member, or organ of sense, for 
instance,] does not include an apprehension of the numerical 
identity of all the constituent atoms all the while, but that it con- 
sists of an apprehension of a continued relation of the organism 
of the limb or organ to our mental consciousness all the time, im- 
plying also that there is no sudden change of a majority, or even 
any large fraction of the constituent atoms thereof at any one time. 

Proofs that Bodies will Rise. — IV. In presenting the Bible- 
proof, nothing more will be done, than to cite the passages, with 
such word of explanation as may be necessary to show their ap- 
plication. If we believe our Saviour, implications of this doctrine 



SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 277 

appear at a very early stage of the Old Testament Scriptures ; for 
indeed the sort of immortality implied all along, is the immortality 
of man, body and soul. (See then Exod. 3: 6, as explained in 
Matt. 22:31, 32; Mark 12: 26, 27.) The next passage is Job 
19: 25, which I claim quicunque vult, as containing a clear asser- 
tion of a resurrection. Ps. 2G: 9, 11, (expounded acts 2: 29, 32, 
13:36, 37.) David is made by the Holy Ghost to foretell Christ's 
resurrection. Doubtless, the Psalmist, if he distinctly knew that 
he was personating Christ in this language, apprehended his own 
resurrection as a corallary of Christ's, (Ps. 17:15,) probably 
alludes also to a resurrection in the phrase : "awake in thy like- 
ness ;" for what awakes, except the body ? Nothing else sleeps. 
(Is. 25: 8, interpreted in I. Cor. 15: 54 ; Daniel 12: 2.) 

In the new Testament the passages are far more numerous and 
plain, the principal being John 5: 21, 29, 6: 39, 40: 11, 24 ; Matt. 
22, 23, &c. I. Cor. 15 ; Acts 24:14, 15 ; I. Theso. 4 13 ; Phil. 
3: 21 ; Hebr. 6: 2 and 11: 35 ; 2 Tim. 2: 8, &c. 

The resurrection of Christ is both example and proof of ours. 
(I. Pet. 1:3; I Cor. 15:20.) 

The Covenant of Grace, as expounded by Christ. (Matt. 22.) 

The inhabitation of our bodies, by the Holy Ghost. 

The justice of God, all as expounded by Turrettin. 

Reprobate not raised in Christ, but by Christ. — V. Some 
divines, as e. g. Breckinridge, say that the resurrection of both 
Saints and sinners is of Christ's purchase, quoting I. Cor. 15: 22, 
making the "a//" mean the whole human race. But we teach, 
that while Christ, as King in Zion, commands the resurrection of 
both, it is in different relations. The resurrection of his people 
being a gift of his purchase, effectuated in them by their union 
to him, and one result of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. The 
resurrection of the evil is an act of pure dominion, effected in 
them by his avenging sovereignty. The other idea would repre- 
sent the wicked also, as vitally connected with Christ, by a mys- 
tical union. But if so, why does not that union sanctify and 
save ? Are we authorized to say that, had Christ not come, there 
would have been no resurrection unto damnation for Adam's fallen 
race at all ? Moreover, that opinion puts an unauthorized and 
dangerous sense upon I. Cor. 15: 22, et sim. 

Scheme of Pre-Adventists. — VI. Millenarianism has received 
in our day a great revival ; and its advocates claim especial fidel- 
ity to the language of Scripture, and to principle. The scheme 
is a pre-millenial literal advent of Christ, destruction (not con- 
version) of unbelieving world, literal resurrection of martyrs and 
apostles, &c, theocratic reign of Christ in person on earth 1,000 
years, (or sycle represented by this symbol) a partial falling away ; 
and then the final end, with the second resurrection, and general 



278 OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 

judgment. Such is the outline of the scheme of the second Ad- 
ventists, or modern Millennariaris ; but there are many diversities 
in their manner of representing the details ; and indeed, no little 
disagreement among themselves. 

This subject, Avhich is now exciting a great deal of attention, 
is too large for the end of a lecture, which you will probably con- 
sider as already too much protracted. I can attempt no more than 
to set down for you a few leading remarks. 

Their Scheme Heterodox by Confession. — Of these the first 
is : that though it is now the passion for these pre-Adventists to 
claim the special honours of orthodoxy, their system is distinctly 
against that of the Westminster Confession. Not only does that 
standard ignore it totally ; it expressly asserts the contrary : Ch. 
VIII, § 4. "Christ shall return to judge men and angels at the 

end of the world" (Ch. XXXII. § 2.) "At the last day, 

all the dead shall be raised up." (Chap. XXXIII, §3.) " So will 
He have that day unknown to men," &c. (Larger Cat. Qu. 56.) 
"Christ shall come again at the last day," &c. Qu. 86, 87. "The 
members of the invisible Church wait for the full redemp- 
tion of their bodies. . . .till at the last day they be again united 
to their souls." "We are to believe that at the last day there 
shall be a general resurrection of the dead, both of the just and 
unjust." If these gentlemen who are Presbvterians intend to be 
candid then, they should openly move for a revision of our stand- 
ards, in this. 

Collides with Scriptural Facts. — Their scheme is obnoxious 
to fatal scriptural objections : That Christ comes but twice, to 
atone, and to judge ; (Heb. 9: 28.) That the heavens must receive 
Christ until the times of the restitution of all things : (Acts 3: 
21.) That the blessedness of the Saints is always placed by 
Scripture in "those new heavens and new earth," which succeed 
the judgment. That on this scheme the date of the world's end 
will be known long before it comes; whereas the Scripture repre- 
sents it as wholly unexpected to all when it comes : That only 
one resurrection is anywhere mentioned in the most express didac- 
tic passages ; so that it behooves us to explain the symbolical 
passage in Kev. 20th, 4 to 6, in consistency with them: That 
the Scriptures say, (E. Gr. I. Cor. 15:23; 2 Thess. 1: 1U; IThess. 
3: 13,) that the whole Church will be complete at Christ's next 
coming: And that then the sacraments, and other "means of 
grace," will cease finally. The opinion is also beset by insupera- 
ble difficulties, such as these : whether these resurrected martyrs 
will die again ; whether they will enjoy innocent corporeal pleas- 
ures ; whether (if the affirmative be taken) their children will be 
born with original sin ; if not, whence those apostate men are to 
come, who make the final brief falling away just before the second 



SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 279 

resurrection, &c. On all these points the pre-Adventists make 
the wildest and most contradictory surmises. 

The Scheme Suggested by Mistrust. — To me it appears that 
the temper which secretly prompts this scheme is one of unbelief. 
Overweening and egotistical hopes of the early evangelizing of 
the whole world, fostered by partial considerations, meet with dis- 
appointment. Henca results a feeling of skepticism ; and they 
are heard pronouncing the present agencies committed to the 
Church, as manifestly inadequate. But the temper which Christ 
enjoins on us is one of humble, faithful, believing diligence in the 
use of those agencies, relying on his faithfulness and power to 
make them do their glorious work. He commands us also to re- 
member how much they have already accomplished, when ener- 
gized by his grace, and to take courage. The tendencies of the 
pre- Advent-scheme are unwholesome, though it has been held by 
some spiritually minded men. 

Their Exegesis no more Faithful. — Its advocates boast that 
they alone interpret the symbols of prophecy faithfully. But 
when Ave examine, we find that they make no nearer approach to 
an exact system of exposition ; and that they can take as wild fig- 
urative licenses when it suits their purposes, as any others. The 
new interpretations are usually but violations of the familiar and 
well-established canon, that the prophets represent the evangelical 
blessings under the tropes of the Jewish usages known to them- 
selves. 



230 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

LECTURE LXIX. 



SYLLABUS. 

THE GENERAL JUDGMENT, AND ETERNAL LD7E. 

See confession of Faith, Ch. XXXIII. Matt. Ch. 25th ; Jno. Ch. 5th ; 2*Thess. 
1: 7, 10; Rev. 20: 12 to end. 

1. What are God's purposes in holding a final universal Judgment ? And 
what the proofs that it will occur ? 

Turrettin, Loc. XX. Qu. 6. Ridgeley, Qu. 88. Davies' Sermon on 
Judgment. Gerhard Loci Theologlci. 

2. What will be the time, place, and accessory circumstances ? 
Dick, Lect. 83 ; Knapp, § 155, and above authorities. 

3. Who will be the Judge ? In what sense will the Saints be his assessors ? 
Ridgeley, as above. 

4. Who will be judged ? And for what ? 
Ridgely and Turrettin, as above. 

5. By what Rule ? What the respective Sentences ? 
See same authorities. 

6. What will be the nature of the reward of the Righteous ? 

Same authorities, especially Dick, Lect. 83; Turrettin, Qu. 8, 10, 11, 12, 
13 ; Knapp, § 159, 160. Young's Last Day. Hill, Bk. V. Ch. 8. 

Objects of General Judgment. — I. It might seem that the pur- 
poses of God's righteousness and government might, at first view, 
be sufficiently satisfied by a final distribution of rewards and pun- 
ishments, to men, as they successively passed out of this life. — 
But his declarative glory requires not only this, but a more for- 
mal, forensic act, by which his righteous, holy, and merciful 
dealing shall be collectively displayed before the Universe. For 
his creatures, both angels and men, are finite, and would remain 
forever in ignorance of a great part of His righteous dispensa- 
tions, unless they received this formal publication. By bringing 
all his subjects (at least of this province of his Universe) togeth- 
er and displaying to all, the conduct and doom of all, he will si- 
lence every cavil, and compel every one to justify Him in all his 
dealings. 

It Stimulates Conscience. — But more than this : man is, dur- 
ing all his probationary state, a sensuous being. So that he cer- 
tainly, if not angels, is powerfully actuated by many motives aris- 
ing out of a judgment to shun sin, and seek after righteousness. 
The strict account, the prompt and irrevocable sentence pronounced 
upon it, the publication of his sins, secret and open, to all the 
world, the accessories of grandeur and awe which will attend the 
last award all, appeal to his nature, as a social and corporeal crea- 
ture, arousing conscience, fear, hope, shame of exposure, aftec- 
tion for fellow-men, and giving substance and reality to the doc- 
trine of future rewards, in a way which could not be felt, if there 
were no judgment day. But, as was remarked concerning the 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 281 

death of tlie Saints ; if any benefit is to be realized from the 
certain prospect of an event, the event would be certain. 

Rational arguments invalid, though probable. — Several ar- 
guments have been announced by theologians to show that reason 
might anticipate a general judgment, (a.) From the necessity of 
some means to readjust the inequalities between men's fates in this 
life and their merits; (b.) From the terrors of man's own guilty 
conscience ; (c.) From the pagan myths concerning future Judges, 
Rhamnusia, Eacus, Minos, Rhadamantkus. But these are rather 
evidences of future rewards and punishments, than of their distri- 
bution in the particular forensic form of a general judgment. 
Reason can oifer no more than a probable evidence of the latter; 
and this evidence is best seen from the objects which God secures 
by a judgment when considered in the light of these convictions. 
So far as God himself is concerned in the satisfaction of the attri- 
butes of justice in his own breast, it would be enough that He 
should see for himself, each man's whole conduct and merits, and 
assign each one, at such time and place as he please, the adequate 
rewards. But reason and conscience make a judgment probable, 
because they obviously indicate the above valuable ends to be sub- 
served by it. For it enables God, not only to right all the ine- 
qualities of his temporal providence, and to sanction the verdicts 
of man's conscience, but to show all this to his kingdom, to the 
glory of his grace and holiness ; to unmask secret sin when he 
punishes it ; to stop the mouths of the accusers of his people 
while he reveals and rewards their secret graces and virtues ; and 
to apply to the soul, while on earth, the most pungent stimuli to 
obedience. 

Revelation teaches it. — But this is more clearly the doctrine 
of Revelation. It would indeed be inaccurate to apply to a gene- 
ral judgment every thing which is said in the Bible about God's 
judgment, as is done to too great an extent by some writers. For 
this word is sometimes used for God's government in general 
(John 5 : 22) for a command or precept, (Ps. 19 : 9 ;) sometimes 
for God's chastisements, (1 Pet. 4 : 17;) sometimes for his ven- 
geance, (Ps. 149 : 9 ;) sometimes for the attribute of righteous- 
ness, (Ps. 72 : 2, 89, 14;) sometimes for a special sentence pro- 
nounced. But the following passages may be said to have more or 
less of a proper application to the general judgment, and from 
them it will be learned that this has been the doctrine of the 
church from the earliest ages, viz. : Jude 14; Eccles. 12: 14; 
Ps. 50 : 3-6, 21 ; possibly Ps. 96 : 13; Dan. 7 : 10; Matt. 12 : 
36 ; 13 : 41 ; 16 : 27, and most notably, 25 : 31-46 ; Acts 17 : 
31 ; 2 Cor. 5 : 10 ; 2 Thess. 1 : 7-10; 2 Tim. 4 : 1 ; 1 Thess. 
4:16; Rev. 20 : 11. Other passages which will be quoted to 
show who are the Judge, and parties judged, and what the sub- 



282 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

jects of judgment, also apply fairly to this point. They need not 
be anticipated here. 

The Judgment not merely Metaphorical. — Some laxer theo- 
logians, especially of the German school, have taught that all 
these passages do not teach a literal, universal, forensic act, but 
merely a state, to which God will successively bring all his crea- 
tures according to their respective merits; in short that the whole 
representation is merely figurative of certain principles of retri- 
bution. The answer is, to point to the previous arguments, which 
show that not only equal retributions, but a public formal declara- 
tion thereof, are called for by the purposes of God's government, 
and the system of doctrines ; and to show that the strong terms 
of the Scriptures cannot be satisfied by such an explanation. There 
are figures; but those figures must be literalized according to fair 
exegetical laws ; and they plainly describe the judgment as some- 
thing that precedes the execution of the retribution. 

Time oe the Judgment. — Did Apostles Miscalculate ? — IT. 
The time of this great transaction, absolutely speaking, is, and is 
intended to be utterly unknown to the whole human race, in order 
that its uncertainty may cause all to fear; 1 Thes. 5 : 2; 2 Pet. 
3:10; Matt. 24 : 36, &c. Hence we may see the unscriptural- 
ness of those who endeavor to fix approximately a day, which God 
intends to conceal, by their interpretations of unfulfilled prophecy. 
If the beginning of the millenium can be definitely fixed by an 
event so marked as the personal advent of Christ ; if its continu- 
ance can be marked off by one thousand literal solar years ; and 
if the short apostacy which is to follow is to last only a few years, 
then God's people will foreknow pretty accurately when to expect 
the last day. Again : the Jewish Christians, among many vague 
expectations concerning Christ's kingdom, evidently expected that 
the final consummation would come at the end of one generation 
from Christ's ascension. This erroneous idea was a very natural 
deduction from the Jewish belief that their temple and ritual was 
to subsist till the final consummation, when coupled with Christ's 
declaration, in Matt. 24, that Jerusalem should be destroyed in 
the day of some then living. See this misconception betrayed, 
Matt. 24 : 3, Acts 1:7. So they doubtless misunderstood Matt. 
16 : 28. Now, it has ever been a favorite charge against the in- 
spiration of the Apostles, in the mouths of infidels, that they evi- 
dently shared in this mistake. E. G. in James 5 : S; 2 Peter 
3 : 12; Phil. 4 : 5, &c. But this charge is founded only in the 
ignorance of the apostles' various meanings when they speak of 
the "coming," or "presence," of Christ. Oftentimes they 
mean the believers death ; for that is practically His coming and 
the end of the world, to that believer ; and the space between that 
and the general judgment is to him no space practically ; because 
nothing can be done in it to redeem the soul. Their misunder 
standing is clearly enough evinced by Paul in 2 Thess. 2 : 1-3, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 283 

&c, with I Thess. 4 : 15, 17. For the latter place contains lan- 
guage than "which none would be more liable to these skeptical 
perversions. Yet in the former citation we see Paul explicitly 
correcting the mistake. See also 2 Cor. 4:14. 

It follows Resurrection. — How long Protracted ? — But 
while, absolutely, the time of the judgment is unknown, relatively 
it is distinctly fixed. It will be immediately after the general 
resurrection, and just coincident with, or just after the final de- 
struction of the globe by fire. The good and evil men do live 
after them. Hence, that measure of merit and demerit, which is 
taken from consequences, is not completely visible to creatures until 
time is completed. St. Paul is still doing good ; Simon Magus is 
still doing mischief. " They, being dead, yet speak ;" 2 Thess. 
2 : 3-13; Rev. 12 : IS; 20: 10-end, &c. The duration of the 
judgment is commonly called a day ; Acts 17 : 31. Some, con- 
ceiving that the work of the judgment will include the intelligible 
revealing of the whole secret life of every creature, to every other 
creature, suppose that the period will vastly exceed one solar day 
in length, stretching possibly to thousands of years. If all this 
is to be done, they may well suppose the time will be long. But 
to me, it seems far from certain that this universal revealing of 
every creature to every other, is either possible or necessary. 
Can any but an infinite mind comprehend all this immense number 
of particulars ? Is it necessary, in order that any one creature 
may have all defective and erroneous ideas about Grod's government 
corrected, which he has contracted in this life, to be introduced to 
the knowledge of parts of his dealings utterly unknown to and 
unconnected with him ? Hence I would say, that of the actual 
duration of the august scene, we know nothing. But we are told 
that its accessories will be vast and majestic. The terrors of the 
resurrection will have just occurred, the earth will be just con- 
signed to destruction. Jesus Christ will appear on the scene with 
ineffable pomp, attended with all the Redeemed and the angels ; 
Acts 1:11. The souls of the blessed will be reunited to their 
bodies, and then they will be assorted out from the risen crowd of 
humanity, and their acquittal and glorification declared to the 
whole assemblage ; while the unbelievers will receive their sentence 
of eternal condemnation. 

Place. — The place of this transaction has also been subject of 
inquiry. To me it appears indubitable that it will occupy a place 
in the literal sense of the word. To say nothing of the fact that 
disembodied souls are not ubiquitous, the actors in this transaction 
will be, many of them, clothed with literal bodies, which, although 
glorified or damned, will occupy space just as really as here on 
earth. All that Scripture says about the place is, 1 Thess. 4 : 17, 
that we " shall be caught up .... into the clouds, to meet the 
Lord in the air.'''' Some, as IJavies, have supposed that the upper 
regions of our atmosphere will be the place where the vast assem- 



284 SYLABUS AND NOTES 

Tbly will be held ; while they will behold the world beneath them;, 
either just before, or during the grand assize, wrapped in the uni- 
versal tires. But see 2 Peter 3 : 10. It would seem most obvious 
from our notions of combustion, as well as from this passage, that 
however that conflagration may be produced, our atmosphere, the 
great supporter of combustion, will be involved in it. This may 
serve as a specimen of the ill-success which usually meets us when 
we attempt to be " wise above that which is written" on these 
high subjects. The place is not revealed to, and cannot be sur- 
mised by us. 

The Judge Christ. Why 1 — III. The Judge will unquestion- 
ably be Jesus Christ, in his mediatorial person. See Matt. 25 : 
31, 32; 28: 18; John 5 : 27 ; Acts 10: 42; 17: 31 ; Rom. 14: 
10; I Cor. 15: 25; Phil. 2 : 10; 2 Tim. 4 : 1. These passages 
are indisputable. Nor have the Scriptures left us ignorant en- 
tirely, of the grounds of this arrangement. The honor and pre- 
rogative of judging " the quick and the dead," is plainly declared, 
in Phil. 2: 9, 10, to be a part of Christ's mediatorial exaltation, 
and a just consequence of his humiliation. It was right that 
when the Lord of all condescended, in his unspeakable mercy, to 
assume the form of a servant, and endure the extremest indigni- 
ties of his enemies, he should enjoy this highest triumph over them, 
in the very form and nature of his humiliation. Indeed, in this 
aspect, his judging the world is but the crowning honor of his 
kingship; so that whatever views explain his kingly office, ex- 
plain this function of it. But more than this : his saints have an 
interest in it. Then only is their redemption completed, justifi- 
cation pronounced finally, and the last consequences of sin oblit- 
erated. By the same reason that it was necessary they should 
have a " merciful and faithful High Priest," in all the previous 
exigencies of their redemption, it is desirable that they should 
have their Mediator for their judge in this last crisis. Otherwise 
they would sink in despair before the terrible bar. They would 
be unable to answer a word to the accuser of the brethren, or to 
present any excuse for their sins But when they see their 
Almighty Friend in the judgment seat, their souls are re-assured. 
This may be the meaning of the words " because He is the son of 
man." John 5 : 27. 

The Saints Assessors. — There seems to be a sense, in which 
the Saints will sit and judge with Christ. Ps. 149 : 6-9 ; I Cor. 
6 : 2,3; Rev. 20 : 4. We suppose no one Avill understand from 
these passages, that Christians can, or will, exercise those incom- 
municable functions of searching hearts, apportioning infinite 
penalties to infinite demerits, and executing the sentence with 
almighty power. There are two lower meanings in Avhich it may 
be said that saints shall jude sinners. Thus, in Matt. 12 : 41, 42, 
I. E. the contrast of the Christian's faith and penitence is a sort 
of practical rebuke and condemnation to those who persisted in 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 285 

the opposite conduct. But this does not express the whole truth. 
The saints are adopted sons of God: "heirs of God, and joint 
heirs with Christ ; if so be we suffer with him, that we may be 
also glorified together" Rom. 8: 17. They also are " kings and 
priests unto God." In this sense, they share, by a sort of reflected 
dignity, the exaltation of their elder brother; and in this, the 
culminating point of his mediatorial royalty, they are graciously 
exalted to share with him, according to their lower measure. 
Having had their own acquittal and adoption first declared, they 
are placed in the post of honour, represented as Christ's right 
hand, and there concur as assessors with Christ, in the remainder 
of the transaction. 

Who will be Judged ? — IV. The persons to be judged will em- 
brace all wicked angels and all the race of man. The evidence 
of the former part of this proposition is explicit. See Matt. 8: 
29, 1 Cor. 6:3; 2 Pet. 2:4; Jude. 6.) (And that every individ- 
ual of the human race will be present is evident fromEccles. 12 : 
14 ; Ps. 50: 4 ; 2 Cor. 5: 10 ; Rom. 14: 10 ; Matt. 12: 36, 37, 25 : 
32; Rev. 20: 12. 

Some have endeavored to limit this judgment, (as the Pelagians), 
to those men who have enjoyed gospel privileges alone. But if 
there are any principles in God's government, calling for a general 
judgment of those subject to it, and if pagans are subject to it, 
then they also should be judged. And if ihe passages above cited 
do not assert an actual universality of the judgment, it is hard to 
see how any language could. It will be noticed that men will be 
judged, and doubtless, the wicked angels likewise, for all their 
thoughts, words and deeds. This is obviously just, and is called 
for by the purposes of a judgment. For if there was any class of 
moral acts which had not this prospect of a judgment awaiting 
them, men would think they could indulge in these with impunity. 
Upon the question whether the sins of the righteous, already par- 
doned in Christ, will receive publicity in that day, Dick states the 
respective arguments. To me it appears that we must admit they 
will be, unless we can prove that the places where men are warned 
that they must be judged "for every idle word," for " every se- 
cret thing," were not addressed to christians at all, but only to 
sinners. The disposition to deny that pardoned sins will be pub- 
lished in the day of judgment, doubtless arises from the feeling 
that it would produce a shame and compunction incompatible with 
the blessedness of their state. But will the saints not publish 
their sins themselves, in their confessions 1 And is it not the 
sweetest type of spiritual joy, that which proceeds from contrition 
for sin ? 

Will Elect Angels be Judged ? — It may be further noticed, 
that the Scriptures are utterly silent as to the judging of the holy 
angels. It is therefore our duty to refrain from asserting anything 
about it. Some have surmised that though they are not men- 



286 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

tioned, they will be judged, because they have some connection 
through their ministry of love, with the men who will be judged. 
But, on the other hand, it may be remarked, that there is signifi- 
cance in the fact that all the creatures spoken of as standing at 
Christ's judgment are sinful ones. The holy angels never sinned ; 
they have been long ago justified through a method totally 
inapplicable to fallen beings, the covenant of works, and this may 
constitute a valid reason why they should not bear a share in this 
judgment of sinning beings, who are either justified by free grace 
or condemned. 

The Spectators.— So far as the judgment is a display of God's 
attributes to the creature, it is doubtless to those creatures who 
are conversant with this scene of earthly struggle. The holy 
angels are concerned in it as interested and loving spectators ; the 
wicked angels as causes and promoters of all the mischief; man, 
as the victim and agent of earthly sin. If God has other orders 
of intelligent creatures, connected Avith the countless worlds of 
which astronomy professes to inform us, who are not included in 
these three classes; it is not necessary to suppose that they will 
share in this scene, because we have no evidence that they are 
cognizant of the sins and grace which lead to it. But here all 
is only dim surmise. 

The Rule. — V. The rule by which sinners and saints will be 
judged, will be the will of God made known to them. The Gen- 
tiles will be judged by that natural law written on their hearts; 
the Jews of the Old Testament by that, and the Old Testament alone; 
but those who have enjoyed the Gospel in addition to the others, shall 
be judged by all three. (See Rom. 2: 12; Jno. 12:4, 8; Luke 
12: 4, 7; John 15: 22.) God will judge justly, and render to every 
man his due. In Dan. 7:10; Rev. 2U: 12 ; the same phrase is 
employed : "The judgment was set, and the books opened." Per- 
haps the mode of understanding this, most accordant with the mind 
of the Spirit, would be to attempt to apply the phrase book to 
nothing in particular, in the judgments of man ; but to regard it 
as a mere carrying out of the august figure : a grand judicial 
trial. But if a more particular explanation must be had, we 
may perhaps concur in the belief, that one of these books is the 
Word of God, which is the statute-book, under which the cases 
must be decided ; another, the book of God's remembrance, from 
which the evidence of conduct will be read ; and still another, the 
book of God's decrees, where the names of men were recorded be- 
fore the foundation of the world. 

Relation of Works op Charity to Judgment. — In Matt. 
25th, the reprobate are condemned because they have not per- 
formed to God's suffering children acts of beneficence and charity, 
and the righteous acquitted because they have. It may be briefly 
remarked here, that while sinners will be condemned strictly on 
the merit of their own conduct, saints will be acquitted solely on the 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 2S7 

merit of Christ. They are revrarded according to, not because 
of, the deeds done in the flesh. The evidence of this may be 
seen, where we refuted the doctrine of justification by works, and 
these very passages were brought into review. But the purpose 
of God in the judgment is to evince the holiness, justice, love, 
and mercy of his dealings to all his subjects. But as they can- 
not read the secret faith, love and penitence of the heart, the sen- 
tence must be regulated according to some external and visible 
conduct, which is cognizable by creatures, and is a proper test of 
regenerate character. It is very noticeable that not all righteous 
conduct, but only one kind, is mentioned as the test ; these works 
of charity. And this is most appropriate, not only because they 
are accurate tests of true holiness, but because it was most proper 
that, in a judgment where the acquittal can in no case occur, ex- 
cept through divine grace and pardon, a disposition to mercy 
should be required of those who hope for acceptance. (See Jas. 
2: 13 ; Matt. 18: 28, end; Matt. G: 12. 

The Sentences. — VI. The sentence of the righteous is ever- 
lasting blessedness ; that of the wicked, everlasting misery. The 
discussion of the latter must be the subject of another lecture. — 
The nature of eternal life I shall now endeavour to state. Ear 
be it from us, to presume to be wise above that which is written : 
let us modestly collect those traits of the sainfs everlasting rest, 
which the Bible, in its great reserve on this subject, has seen fit 
to reveal. 

The Place of Reward. — The place of this eternal life is usually 
called heaven. It is undoubtedly a place proper, and not merely 
a state. For there are now, the material bodies of Christ, and 
of Enoch and Elijah, if not of others. There will be a multitude 
of bodies. The finite glorified spirits there also have a ubi. It is 
vain for us to surmise, in what part of the Universe Christ's glo- 
rified humanity now holds its court. The phrases "up," "above," 
"ascend," &c, teach nothing; for what is above. to us, is beneath 
to our antipodes, in whose places we shall be in twelve hours. A 
comparison of 2 Pet. 3: 13, with Rev. 21: 1-10 suggests that 
after the judgment, this earth, purified and reconstructed, will be 
the abode of the saints and their incarnate Redeemer. It seems 
not unworthy of Him, to make this rebel province, reconquered 
from its usurper, Satan, the final seat of his triumph in his ran- 
somed Church. The place will doubtless have all the material 
beauty, commodiousness, and glory, which can please the sancti- 
fied eye and taste. If one should be inclined to deem material 
splendour too trivial for God to provide for the redeemed, I Avould 
point him to the material beauties of the present universe, even 
that part marred by sin. 

The Saints' Blessedness. — (a.) In Exemption. — (b.) In Holi- 
ness. — But it is not place, but character, which confers essential 



288 SYLABUS AND NOTES 

happiness. We are taught indeed that occasion for this spiritual 
blessedness will be secured to the Saints by their perfect exemp- 
tion from all natural evils, such as unsatisfied wants, pain, grief, 
sickness, violence, and death. (See Job 3: 7 ; Is. 25: 8 ; Rev. 
7: 16, 17; 21:4. But the most important fact is, that the blessed- 
ness of the life everlasting is simply the perfection of that; state 
which is begun here by the new birth and sanctification. As saith 
M. Henry, "Grace is glory begun, and glory is but grace con- 
summated." (See Jno. 5:24; 6:47; Gal. 6:7). On entering 
heaven the soul is made perfectly holy ; and thus every root of 
misery is removed. When we inquire for the objective sources of 
the saints' bliss, we find them subordinately in the society of fel- 
low-saints, but chiefly in God himself, and especially in the Re- 
deemer. (Psalm 73: 25 ; Rev. 21: 23). That the Saints' happi- 
ness will be social, is plain from the Bible representations ; and I 
believe that those who have known and loved each other here, will 
recognize each other there. (See IThess. 2: 19, 2 ; Sam. 12: 23). 
And it appears very unreasonable that the love, and other social 
graces which are there perfected in their glorified humanity should 
then have no objects. But the Holy Trinity will ever be the cen- 
tral and chief object, from which the believer's bliss will be de- 
rived. 

Elements of this Happiness Intellective. — This happiness 
will consist in the satisfaction of both mind and heart. Curiosity 
is one of the keenest and most uncloying sources of interest and 
pleasure to the healthy mind. Then "we shall know even as we 
are known ;" and our minds will find perpetual delight in learning 
the things of God and his providence. Here will be matter of 
study ample enough to fill eternity. 

Moral. — Again : To love is to be happy, saith the apostle 
John. "He that dwelleth in love, dweileth in God, and God in 
him." Our terrestrial objects of affection have taught us, that if 
the heart could always be exercising its affection towards some 
worthy object, this would constitute happiness. But the object 
being earthly, we are constantly liable to be separated from it by 
distance, or to have it torn from us by death, when our affection 
becomes our torment. Or, being imperfect, it may wound us by 
infidelity or injustice. Or else corporeal wants drive us from it to 
labour. But now let us suppose the soul, endowed with an object 
of love wholly worthy and suitable, never separated by distance, 
nor torn away by death, incapable of infidelity, or unkindness, is 
it not plain that in the possession and love of this object, there 
would be perpetual blessedness, external evils being fenced off? 
Such an object is God, and such is the blessedness of heaven, 
springing from the perpetual indulgence of a love that never cloys, 
that is never interrupted, and never wounded, and that expresses 
its happiness in untiring praises. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 289 

LECTURE LXX. 



SYLLABUS. 

NATURE AND DURATION OF HELL-TORMENTS. 

1 . In what will the torments of the wicked consist ? 
Turrettin, Loc. XX, Qu. 7 ; Ridgeley, Qu. 89 ; Knapp, § 156. 

2. State the various opinions which have prevailed as to the duration of these 
pains. Which now most prevalent among Universalists ? 

Turrettin, as above ; Knapp, § 156 to 158. Debate between Rice and 
Pingree. 

3. State and refute the usual objections against everlasting punishments, from 
God's wisdom, mercy, benevolence, &c. 

Knapp, as above. Rice and Pingree. 

4. "What is the proper force in the Scriptures of the original words which 
state the duration of these torments ? 

Knapp, § 157. De Quincey's Essays. 

5. Prove the everlasting duration of these torments from the sinner's perpet- 
ual sinfulness ; from the Scriptural terms, Redemption, pardon, salvation, &c. ; 
from Universal relation in Providence between conduct and destiny ; from the 
existence of condemned angels; from the Resurrection; from temporal judg- 
ments of God on the wicked as Sodom, &c. ; from the justice of God and the 
unequal distribution of rewards here. 

Same authorities. 

Natural Penalties. — I. The just reward of ill-desert is suf- 
fering. The Judgment results in a curse upon the impenitent, 
which dooms them, as none doubt, to some form of suffering. 
Theologians divide the pains which are thus adjudged to the con- 
demned, into natural, and positive. The former are those which 
proceed from the natural working of their own evil principles, of 
themselves, and according to natural law ; such pains as are fore- 
shadowed in Isaiah 3:11; Gal. 6:8; Jas. 1:15. These natural 
penalties consist of the loss or privation of eternal happiness, 
which only faith, repentance, and holiness can procure ; of the 
remorse, self-accusation, and despair, which the soul will inflict 
on itself for its own folly and sin ; of all the disorders, inward 
and social, of inordinate and malignant emotions ; and as is most 
probable, at least, of the stings of carnal, sensual and sinful de- 
sires deprived of all their earthly pabulum. As to this last, it 
appears most consistent to limit what is said, (I Cor. 15 : 45 — end) 
of the spirituality and blessedness of the resurrection body, to 
the Saints. The reprobate will rise again ; but as they never 
were savingly united to Christ, they never will " bear the image 
of the heavenly " Adam. Hence, we naturally and reasonably 
anticipate, that their bodies, while immortal, will not share the 
glory and purification of the bodies of the Redeem ed,but will still 
be animal bodies, having the appetites and wants of such. But 
earthly supplies therefor will be forever lacking. Hence, they 
Will be a prey to perpetual cravings unsatisfied. 



290 SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 

Positive Penalties. — The positive penalties of sin will be such 
as God will Himself add, by new dispensations of his power, to 
inflict anguish on his enemies. The Scriptures always represent 
Him as arising to avenge himself, as "pouring out his wrath" 
upon his enemies ; and in such like, and a multitude of other ex- 
pressions, whatever may be their figurative character, we cannot 
fail to see this truth, that God puts forth new and direct power, to 
inflict pain. The stupidity and obstinacy of many sinners, obvi- 
ously, would be restrained by nothing less than the fear of these 
positive penalties. The mere natural penalties would appear to 
them wholly illusory, or trivial. Indeed, most sinners are so well 
pleased with their carnal affections, that they would rather declare 
themselves glad to accept, and even cherish, their merely natural 
fruits. 

Will They Afflict the Body ? — These positive penalties un- 
doubtedly will include, when the body is raised, some corporeal 
pains, and perhaps consist- chiefly in them; else, why need the 
body be raised ? And there is too obvious a propriety in God's 
punishing sinners through those members which they have per- 
verted into "members of unrighteousness," for us to imagine for 
a moment, that He will omit it. Once more ; the imagery by 
which the punishments of the wicked are represented, however 
interpreted, is so uniform, as to make it impossible to suppose the 
bodies of the wicked are exempted. But whether their bodies will 
be burned with literal fire and sulphur, does not appear so certain. 
In Matt. 25th, the fire into which they depart is said to have been 
prepared from the foundation of the world, for the Devil and his 
angels. They are, and will always remain, incorporeal beings ; 
and it does not seem probable that literal fire is the instrument 
which God has devised expressly for their torment. Some weight 
may also be given to this thought; that other adjuncts, as the 
darkness, the gnawing worm, the brimstone, the smoke, &c, seem 
to be images adopted from human tortures and earthly scenes of 
anguish. Hence the conclusion to which Turrettin comes; that 
this is all imagery. But, however that may be, the images must 
be interpreted according to plain rules of right rhetoric. Interpret 
it as we may, we cannot get anything less from it than this : that 
sin will be punished with extreme and terrible bodily torments, 
as well as with natural pains. 

Eternal Punishments Denied. 1. By Annihilationists. 2. 
Restorationists. 3. Universalists. — II. Those who deny the 
eternity of future punishments may be divided into three classes. 
First are those who resolve the punishment of the wicked into an- 
nihilation. They believe, accordingly, that only the redeemed enjoy 
a resurrection. Second are the ancient and modern Restoration- 
ists, who hold to future punishments, longer or shorter, according 
to men's guilt ; but who suppose that each man's repentance will 
be accepted after his penal debt is paid ; so that at length, per- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 291 

hap3 after a long interval, all will be saved. It is said that the 
Originists believed that Satan and his angels would also be at last 
saved. The third opinion is that which is now chiefly prevalent 
among modern Universalists. This supposes, that the external 
and internal sufferings which each soul experiences during this 
life, and in articulo mbrtis, will satisfy all the essential demands 
of the divine justice against its sins :■> and that there will, accord- 
ingly, be no future punishments. At death, they suppose, those 
not already penitent and holy, will be summarily sanctified by 
God, in his universal mercy through Christ, and at once received 
into Heaven forever. The inventor, or at least, chief propagator, 
of this phase was a Massachusetts man, Hosea Ballon, whose sect 
now embraces all the Universalists known to me, in America,. 
It is, therefore, with this theory that we chiefly have to do. 

First Class Refuted. — To clear the way, the Annihilationist 
may be easily refuted, by all those passages which speak of future 
punishment, even though we grant it not eternal. Such are Mark 
9 : 44, 46 ; Matt. 25th, &c. The resurrection extends to the 
wicked, as well as the righteous (Dan. 12:2; John 9 : 28, 29). 
Nor does the quibble avail, that the phrase, " everlasting destruc- 
tion," or such-like, implies annihilation. If this consisted in re- 
ducing the sinner forever to nothing, it would be instant destruc- 
tion, not everlasting. How can punishment continue, when the 
subject of it has ceased to exist ? 

God's Love Consists with Eternal Punishments. — III. But 
it may be well to clear away obstructions, by refuting the general 
grounds on which the eternity of future punishments is denied. 
The most common of these is that construction of the text, " God 
is Love," which makes Him pure benevolence, denying to Him 
all other moral attributes, and resolving them into phases of benev- 
olence. But we reply; other texts say, " God is Light;" " Our 
God is a Consuming Fire." Is he nothing but pure intelligence ? 
Is He nothing but primitive justice ? We see the absurd contra- 
dictions into Avhich such a mode of interpretation would lead us. 
Infinite benevolence, intelligence, justice, and truth are co-ordi- 
nate and consistent attributes, acting harmoniously. That God is 
not benevolent in such a sense as to exclude primitive justice, is 
proved thus: " It is a fearful thing to fall into hands of the Living 
God" (Heb. 10: 31. See also, 2 Cor. 5 : 1 1 ; Ps. 66 ; 5). Again; 
God is not too benevolent to punish devils, once his holy children, 
eternally (see Rev. 20 : 10). Nor can this ruinous fact be evaded 
by denying the personality of the devils ; the usual resort of the 
Universalists. The marks of the real personality of devils are as 
clear as for Judas Iscariot's. 

God not to be Measured by Men. — It is equally vain to ap- 
peal to the paternal benevolence of a father, claiming that God 
is more tender, and to ask whether any earthly parent is capable 
of tormenting his own child, however erring, with endless fire. 



292 SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 

The answer is in such passages as Ps. 50 : 21. " Thou thoughtest 
that I was altogether such an one as thyself, but I will rebuke 
thee," (Is. 55 : 8,) and by the stubborn fact that this ' God of 
Love ' does punish a sinful world, under our eyes, with continual 
woes, many of them gigantic. How are these dealings to be 
reconciled with God's benevolence ? By the sufferer's guilt. Then, 
if the guilt of any is endless, the benevolence of God may per- 
mit them to suffer endlessly. Even if we accept the erroneous 
parallel to a human parent as exact, we may ask: Would a benev- 
olent, wise, and just parent so spare an incorrigibly wicked son, 
as to sacrifice the order of his house, and the rights of the good 
children to his impunity ? This argument is sometimes put in 
this form: " We are commanded to be like God. We are also 
commanded to forgive and love our enemies. But if we were like 
the Calvinists' God, we must hate and damn our enemies." The 
replies are, that God is also a magistrate ; and that human magis- 
trates are strictly required to condemn the wicked : that we are 
under no circumstances required to pardon and love enemies, at 
the expense of justice and truth ; that we are only required to 
restore the injurious enemy to our confidence and esteem, when he 
repents ; that one great reason why we are enjoined not to revenge 
ourselves, is that " vengeance is God's; He will repay ;" and that 
God does exhibit an infinite forbearance towards His enemies, by 
giving His own son to die for their reconciliation on the terms of 
faith and repentance ; the only terms consistent with His perfec- 
tions. 

God's Wisdom Consists with Eternal Punishments. — The 
attempt to argue, that God's wisdom would forbid him to create 
immortal beings, and then permit them to forfeit the ends of their 
existence, is exceedingly weak and presumptuous. Before the 
argument can apply, it must be determined what is God's secret 
purpose as to the ultimate end of their existence. He must sup- 
pose himself omniscient, who imagines himself competent to decide. 

Scriptural Terms Considered. — IV. One would think that the 
declarations of the Scriptures about eternal punishments were clear 
enough to decide the debate. But you are aware that the words 
used in the Scriptures for everlasting, eternal, &c, are said to mean 
also an " age," a " dispensation," a finite duration ; and that we 
hear of the everlasting hills, and the covenant with David's house 
as eternal as the sun ; wbereas we are told elsewhere that the hills 
shall melt, and the sun be darkened, as David's dynasty has per- 
ished. 

But these words are as strong as any the Greek language affords. 
(Aristotle, iownios from aiei own.) They are the same words 
which are used to express the eternity of God. If they have a 
secondary and limited meaning in some applications, the subject 
and context should be appealed to, in order to settle the sense. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 293 

Now, when these words are used to describe a state, they always 
express one as long as the nature of the subject to which they are 
applied can permit. When, e. g., the hills are called everlasting, 
it is evidently meant, that they will endure as long as the earth on 
which they rest. Now if "everlasting torment" is said to be the 
state of a. sinful soul, those who believe the soul immortal are 
bound to understand by it a duration of the punishment coevil 
with that of the sufferer's being. See thus Rev. 14 : 1 1, 20 : 10, 
with 22 : 5, 2 Thess. 1 : 9, Mark 3 : 29, Matt. 18:8. The con- 
clusive fact is, that in Matt. 25 : 46, the same word describes the 
duration of the saint's bliss and the sinner's penalty. If the latter 
is not properly unending, the former is not. 

Eternal Torments taught in other Terms. — But more than 
this : Many texts convey the idea that the torments of sinners will 
never end, in terms and modes to which this quibble cannot attach. 
Thus, the state of men after death is changeless ; and when the 
state of it is fixed at death, nothing more can be done to modify 
it; Eccles. 9 : 10; John 9:4; Eccles. 11:3. Then it is as- 
serted that " their worm dieth not." " The fire is not quenched." 
Mark 9 : 43-47, John 3 : 3 and 36, Luke 16 : 26, Rev. 21 : 8. 
Compared with verses 1 and 4, Rev. 22 : 11, 12. 

Universalists contradict whole Scripture ; as Satan's Per- 
sonality. — Man's Probation. — V. But the strength of our argu- 
ment is, that to teach the limited duration of the punishment of 
sin, Universalists and Restorationists have to contradict nearly 
every fact and doctrine of the Bible. We have seen how they are 
compelled by their dogma to deny the personality of Satan. The 
Scriptures bear upon their very face this truth, that man must 
fulfil some condition in order to secure his destiny. Let that faith 
on which salvation turns be what it may, it is a something the 
doing or not doing of which decides the soul's state in different 
ways. See e. g., Mark 16 : 16, as one of a thousand places. 
But if the Universalist is true, he who believes and he who believes 
not, will fare precisely alike. And here I may add that powerful 
analogical argument : that under the observed course of God's 
providence, men are never treated alike irrespective of their doings 
and exertions: conduct always influences destiny. But if the 
Universalist is true, the other world will be in contradiction to 
this. 

There is no pardon, &c, nor satisfaction by Christ. — Again : 
if either the Universalist or Restorationist is true, there is no 
grace, no pardon, no redemption, and no salvation. For according 
to both, all the guilt men contract is paid for ; according to the 
one party, in temporal sufferings on earth; according to the other, 
in temporary sufferings beyond the grave. Now that which is 
paid for by the sinner himself is not remitted to him. There is 
no pardon or mercy. Nor can it be said that there is any salva- 



294 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

tion. For the only evils to which the sinner is at any time liable, 
he meets and endures to the full. None are escaped ; there is no 
deliverance ; no salvation. So we may charge, that their doctrines 
are inconsistent with that of Christ's satisfaction or atonement. 
For of course, if each sinner bears his own guilt, there is no need 
of a substitute to bear it. Hence we find the advocates of these 
schemes explaining away the vicarious satisfaction of Christ. 

Universaltsts Skeptical. — Indeed, it may justly be added, that 
the tendency of their system is to depreciate the authority of the 
Word, to deny its plenary inspiration, to question its teachings 
with irreverent license, and to disclose much closer affinities with 
infidelity than with humble faith. This charge is fully sustained 
by the history of Universalist churches (so called) and of their 
teachers and councils. Finally, passing over for the time, the 
unanswerable argument, that sin has infinite ill desert, as com- 
mitted against an excellent, perfect and universal law, and an in- 
finite lawgiver, I may argue that even though the desert of a tem- 
porary season of sinning were only temporary penalties, yet if man 
continues in hell to sin forever, he will continue to suffer forever. 
While he was paying off a previous debt of guilt he would con- 
tract an additional one, and so be forever subject to penalty. 

Their Proof-texts Considered. — An attempt is made to 
argue universal salvation from a few passages represented by Rom. 
5: 18, and 1 Cor. 15 : 22, in which the word "all" is used. I 
reply, 1st, that those who use this argument do no.t believe that 
" all," or any " come into condemnation" by Adam's sin, or " die 
in Adam ;" and they have no right to argue thence that they will 
be saved in Christ. They cannot contradict me when I charge 
them with flatly denying the imputation of Adam's guilt to any of 
his posterity. I reply, 2d, that the word " all" is, notoriously, used 
in the Scripture when it often does not mean actual universality ; 
but only all of a certain class; Matt. 3 : 5, Mark 1 : 37. So, in 
these texts, the meaning obviously is, that as in Adam all are con- 
demned, all die, who are federally connected with him, so, in Christ, 
all savingly connected with him are made alive. See the context. 
The very chapter which says, " The free gift came upon all," &c, 
begins by saying that being " justified by faith," we have peace 
with God. It must be then that the free gift comes upon " all" 
that believe. So 1 Cor. 15 : 22, is immediately followed by these 
words : " But every man in his own order, Christ the first fruits : 
afterwards they that are Christ's at his coming." Obviously, it is 
"all" who are Christ's, who are made alive in him. But let the 
Scripture tell us who are Christ's. " If any man have not the 
spirit of Christ; he is none of his." There is this answer also, to 
the Universalist quoting 1 Cor. 15 : 22, that, apply it to whom we 
will, it teaches after all, not future blessedness, but the resurrec- 
tion of the body. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 295 

The Doctrine of Two Resurrections. — This doctrine of the 
Resurrection also suggests an argument against Universalism, be- 
cause it is most clearly taught that there are two resurrections ; 
one for the just and one for the unjust; one desirable, and one 
dreadful; one for which holy men of old strove, and one which 
they shunned. But if all at the resurrection were renewed and 
saved, there would be but one resurrection. The passage quoted 
from Jno. 5th, 29th, settles that point. For it cannot be evaded 
by the figment of a metaphorical resurrection, i. e., a conversion 
in this life, because of this Christ had thus been speaking in verses 
25th to 27th. It is in contrast with this, that he then sets the 
real, material resurrection before us in verses 28th, &c. More- 
over, if the resurrection be made a metaphorical one, then in 
verse 29th, we should have the good, in common with the wicked, 
coming out of that state of depravity and ruin, represented by the 
"graves" of V. 25, C. 6. (See also, Phil. 3: 11 ; Heb. 11:35.) 

Death would not be a Judgment to Sinners. — If the modern 
Universalist scheme is true, then the only thing which prevents 
this life from being an unmingled curse, and death a natural good, 
is the pain of parting and dissolution. If these were evaded by a 
quick and easy death, it would be an immeasurable benefit ; a step 
to an assured blissful state, from one both sinful and unhappy. — 
The most fortunate life here is almost worthless, compared with 
heaven. Hence, when one is suddenly taken from this life, it is 
not a penalty, but a favour. We must contradict all that the 
Scriptures teach, of sudden deaths being a judgment of God against 
sinners. The antediluvians were gloriously distinguished from 
Noah, by being illustriously rewarded for their sins by a sudden 
and summary introduction to holiness and happiness ; while he 
was punished for his piety by being condemned to many hundreds 
of years of suffering, including all the horrors of his watery im- 
prisonment. So the Sodomites were rewarded for their sins, while 
Lot was punished by his piety. The cruel Egyptians were swept 
into glory on the waters of the Red Sea, while Moses was pun- 
ished for his obedience by a tiresome pilgrimage of forty years. 

Sins are not Adequately Requited Here. — Again : the asser- 
tion that each man's temporal sufferings in this life, and in articule 
mortis, are a just recompense for his sins, is false. Scripture and 
observation deny it ; the former in Ps. 73:2, 14; Luk. 16:25, 
and similar passages ; the latter in the numerous instances seen 
by every experienced person, where the humble, pure, retired, 
prayerful christian spends years in pain, sickness, and poverty, 
while the sturdy rake or covetous man revels in the sensual joys 
or gains which he prefers, and then dies a painless and sudden 
death. In short,' the facts are so plainly against this theory, that 
the notorious inequality of deserts and rewards in this life has 
"furnished to every reflecting mind, both pagan and christian, one 



296 SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 

of the strongest evidences in favour of future reward and pun- 
ishments. 

God would Therefore be Partial. — In this connexion I 
would argue also, that on the modern Universal scheme, God 
would often be odiously unjust. But see Ps. 89: 14 ; Gen. 18: 25 ; 
Rom. 2: 6, &c. Now our adversaries stoutly deny that any guilt 
is imputed to Christ and punished in him. Hence, the flagrant 
inequality remains, according to them, forever uncompensated. 
The vilest and the purest would receive the same rewards, nay, 
in many cases, the advantage would be against the good ; Provi- 
dence would often reward vice and punish virtue. For, if the 
monster of sin is at death renewed and carried immediately to 
heaven, just as is the Saint, thenceforward they are equal ; but 
betore, the sinner had the advantage. Whilp holy Paul was wear- 
ing out a painful life in efforts to do good, many a sensualist, like 
his persecutor Nero, was floating in his preferred enjoyments. — 
Both died violent and sudden deaths ; and then, as they met in 
the world of spirits, the monster receives the same destiny with 
the Saint. So every one of even a short experience, can recall 
instances somewhat similar, which have fallen under his own 
observation. 

Instances. — I can recall a pair of such persons, whose history 
may illustrate both my last arguments. Their lives and deaths 
were nearly cotemporary, and I was acquainted with the history 
of both. The one was a christian female, in whom a refined and 
noble disposition, sanctified by grace, presented one of the most 
beautiful examples of virtue which this world can often see. She; 
united early and long-tried piety, moral courage, generosity, self- 
devotion, with the most feminine refinement of tastes, charity and 
tenderness. There was a high frame of devotion without a shade 
of austerity ; there was the courage of a martyr, without a tinge 
of harshness. She united the most rigid economy towards herself 
with the most liberal benefactions. For many years, she denied 
herself the indulgence of her elegant tastes, except such as nature 
offered without expense in the beauties of flower, and forest, and 
landscape, in order that she might husband the proceeds of a mod- 
erate competency for the needy, for the suffering, and for God 
Her days were passed in a pure retirement, far from the strifes and 
corruptions of the world. Her house was the unfailing refuge of 
the sick and the unfortunate among her kindred and the poor; her 
life was little else than a long and painful ministration to their 
calamities ; and more than once she had flown, with amoral hero- 
ism which astonished her friends, into the midst of pestilence, to 
be the ministering angel at the solitary couch of her suffering 
relatives. Never did neglect cause her devotion to flag, and 
never did reproach or injury wring from her a word or deed 
of retaliation, although oho received not a little of both, even 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 297 

from those whom she strove to bless. Such was her life to the 
last. 

And now let us look at her earthly reward. Her whole life was 
spent in uncertain, or in feeble health. It was often her lot to 
have her kindness misunderstood, and her sensitive affecti ons lace- 
rated. She scarcely tasted earthly luxuries or ease ; for she 
lived for others. At length, three years before her death, she 
was overtaken by that most agonizing and incurable of all the 
scourges which afflict humanity, cancer. For three long years 
her sufferings grew, and with them, her patience. The most 
painful remedies were endured in vain. The last weeks of her 
life were spent in utter prostration, and unceasing agony, so strong 
that her nurses declared themselves amazed and affrighted to see a 
nature so frail as man's, bearing such a load of anguish. A pe- 
culiarity of constitution deprived her even of that poor resource 
of suffering, the insensibility of opiates. Up to the very hour of 
death, there was no respite ; without one moment of relaxation 
in the agony, to commend her soul to her Saviour; maddened by 
unbearable pangs; crying like her dying Redeemer, "My God, 
my God, why hast thou forsaken me," she approached the river 
of death, and its waters were not assuaged to ease her passage. 

Now for the contrast. During nearly the same period, and in 
an adjoining county, there lived a man, who embodied as many 
repulsive qualities as it has ever been my lot to see in one 
human breast. His dark, suspicious eye, and malignant counte- 
nance gave fit expression to the soul within. Licentious, a drunk- 
ard, devoid of natural affection, dishonest, quarrelsome, litigious, 
a terror to his neighbors, he was soiled with dark suspicion of mur- 
der. He revelled in robust health ; and, as far as human eye could 
see, his soul was steeped in ignorance and sensuality, and his con- 
science seared as with heated iron. He was successful in escaping 
the clutches of the law, and seemed to live in the enjoyment of 
his preferred indulgences. At length this man, at the monthly 
court of his county, retired to a chamber in the second story of 
the tavern, drunk, as was his wont, and lay down to sleep. The 
next morning, he was found under the window, stone dead, and 
with a broken neck. Whether he had walked in his sleep, or the 
hand of revenge had thrust him out, was never known. In all 
probability he never knew what killed him, and went into the other 
world without tasting a single pang, either in body or soul, of 
the sorrows of dissolution. 

Can Justice make These Equal ? — Now let us suppose that 
these two persons, appearing so nearly at the same time in the 
presence of God, were together introduced into the same heaven. 
Where is the equality between their deserts and their rewards ? On 
the whole, the providential difference was in favor of the most guilty. 
If this is God's justice, then is he more fearful than blind chance, 



298 SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 

than the Prince of Darkness himself. To believe our everlasting 
destiny is in the hand of such unprincipled omnipotence, is more 
horrible than to dwell on the deceitful crust of a volcano. And 
if heaven consists in dwelling in his presence, it can have no 
attractions for the righteous soul. 

Universalism has no Mot we for Propagating it. — In con- 
clusion ; whether Universalism be true or false, it is absurdity to 
teach it. If it turns out true, no one will have lost his soul for 
not learning it. If it turns out false, every one who has embraced 
it thereby will incur an immense and irreparable evil. Hence, 
though the probabilities of its truth were as a million to one, it 
would be madness and cruelty to teach it. 

But, apart from all argument, what should a right-minded man 
infer from the fact, that of all intelligent and honest students of 
the Scriptures, scarcely one in a million has found the doctrine of 
universal salvation in them. 

Its Chief Pretext is Insensibility of Believers. — The chief 
practical argument in favor of Universalism is, doubtless, the sin- 
ful callousness of christians towards this tremendous destiny of 
their sinful fellow-creatures. Can we contemplate the exposure 
of our friends, neighbours, and children to a fate so terrible, and 
feel so little sensibility, and make efforts so few and weak for their 
deliverance ! And yet, we profess to have faith ! How can our 
unbelieving friends be made to credit the sincerity of our convic- 
tions ? Here, doubtless, is the best argument of Satan, for their 
skepticism. And the best refutation of this heresy is the exhibi- 
tion by God's people of a holy, tender, humble, yet burning zeal 
to pluck men as brands from the burning. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 299 

LECTURE LXXI. 



SYLLABUS. 

THE CIVIL MAGISTRATE. 

1. State the two theories of the origin of civil government out of a " social 
contract," and out of the ordinance of God. Establish the true one. 

2. What is civil liberty ? "What its limits ? 

3. What are the proper objects of the powers of the Civil Magistrate ? What 
their limits ? What the limits to the obedience of a christian man to the Civil 
Magistrate ? When and how far is the christian entitled to plead a ' higher law ? ' 

4. Is the citizen bound always to passive obedience ? If not, when does the 
right of forcible resistance to an unjust government begin ? 

See Confession of Faith, Chap. XXIII. Blackstone's Com. B. I. Ch. 2. 
Paley's Moral, Phil. B. VI, ch. 1-5, Montesquieu Esprit des Loix, B.|I. Ch. XL 
Burlemaqui, Vol. IV, Pt. I. Locke's Treatise of Civil Gov. Bk. 2. Prince- 
ton Review, Jan, 1851. Bledsoe on Liberty and Slavery, Ch. I. So. 
Rev. Art. ' Civil Liberty.' Defence of Virginia and the South, Ch. 
VII, § 3. 

Examined in its Christian Aspects only. — The duty of the 
christian citizen to civil society is so extensive, and important, 
and so many questions arise, as to its limits and nature, the pro- 
priety of holding office, the powers exercised by the magistrate, 
&c, that the teacher of the Church should be -well grounded in the 
true doctrine of the nature of the commonwealth. Hence, our 
Confession has very properly placed this doctrine in its 23d chap- 
ter. It is emphatically a doctrine of Scripture. 

Theories of Government Origin. — I. Three opposing theories 
have prevailed, among nominally christian philosophers, as to the 
origin and extent of the Civil Magistrate's powers. The one 
traces them to a supposed social contract. Men are to be at first 
apprehended, they say, as insulated individuals, separate human 
integers, all naturally equal, and each by nature absolutely free, 
having a natural liberty to exercise his whole will, as a "Lord of 
Creation." But the experience of the exposure, inconveniences, 
and mutual violences of so many independent wills, led them, in 
time, to be willing to surrender a part of their independence, in 
order to secure the enjoyment of the rest of their rights. To do 
this, they are supposed to have conferred, and to have entered into 
a compact with each other, binding themselves to each other to 
submit to certain rules and restraints upon their natural rights, 
and to obey certain ones selected to rule, in order that the power 
thus delegated to their hands might be used for the protection of 
the remaining rights of all. Subsequent citizens entering the 
society, by birth or immigration, are supposed to have given an 
assent, express or implied, to this compact. The terms of it form 
the organic law, or constitution of the commonwealth. And the 
reason why men are bound to obey the legitimate commands of the 



300 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

magistrate is, that they have thus bargained with their fellow-cit- 
izens to obey, for the sake of mutual benefits. 

Social Contract Theory Modified. — Many writers, as Black- 
stone, and Burlemaqui, are too sensible not to see that this theory 
is false to the facts of the case ; but they still urge, that although 
individual men never existed, in fact, in the insulated state sup- 
posed, and did not actually pass out of that state into a common- 
wealth state, by a formal social contract ; yet such a contract must 
be assumed as implied, and as offering the virtual source of political 
power and obligation. To us it appears, that if the compact never 
occurred in fact, but is only a suppositious one, a legal fiction, it 
is no basis for any theory, and no source for practical rights and 
duties. 

Christian Theory. — The other theory may be called the Chris- 
tian. It traces civil goverment to the will and providence of God, 
who, from the first, created man with social instincts and placed 
him under social relations (when men were few, the patriarchal ; as 
they increased, the commonwealth). It teaches that some form of 
social goverment is as original as man itself. If asked, whence 
the obligation to obey the civil magistrate, it answers : from the 
will of God, which is the great source of all obligation. The fact 
that such obedience is greatly promotive of human convenience, 
well-being and order, confirms and illustrates the obligation, but 
did not originate it. Hence, civil government is an ordinance of 
God; magistrates rule by his providence and by his command, 
and are his agents or ministers. Obedience to them, in the Lord, 
is a religious duty, and rebellion against them is not only injustice 
towards our fellow-men, but disobedience to God. This is the 
theory plainly asserted by Paul, Rom. 13: 1-7, and I Peter, 
2: 13-18 may be illustrated by the parental state. 

Theory of Divine Right. — This account of the matter has 
been also pushed to a most vicious extreme, by the party known 
as Legitimatists, or advocates of the divine right of royalty. The 
Bible here teaches us, they assert, that the power the civil magis- 
trate holds, is in no sense delegated from the people, but wholly 
from God ; that the people have no option to select or change 
their form of government any more than a child has to choose its 
parent, or a soul the deity it will worship ; that no matter how op- 
pressive or unjust the government may be, the citizen has no duty 
nor right but passive submission, and that the divinely selected 
form is hereditary monarchy — the form first instituted in the hand 
of Adam, continued in the patriarchal institution, re-affirmed in 
the New Testament, and never departed from except by heaven- 
defying republicans, &c. 

Refutation. — This servile theory we easily refute by many 
facts. Men in society do not bear to rulers the relation of chil- 
dren to parents, either in their greater weakness, inferiority of 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 301 

knowledge or virtue, or in the natural affection felt for them, but 
are in the general the natural equals of their rulers. Hence, the 
argument from the family to the commonwealth to prove that it is 
monarchial, utterly fails. 2d. The chosen form given by God to 
the Hebrew Commonwealth was not monarchial, but republican. 
And when he reluctantly gave them a king, the succession was 
not hereditary, but virtually elective, as witness the cases of 
David, Jeroboam, Jehu, &c. 3. The New Testament does not 
limit its teachings to the religious obligation to obey kings, but 
says generally: "the Powers that be are ordained of God:" 
" There is no power but of God," thus giving the religious source, 
equally to the authority of kings and constables, and giving it to 
any form of government which providentially existed de facto. The 
thing then which God ordains is not a particular form of government, 
but that men shall maintain some form of government. Last, it is 
peculiarly fatal to the Legitimatist theory that the actual govern- 
ment of Rome, which the New Testament immediately enjoined 
christians to obey, was not a legitimate nor a hereditary monarchy, 
but one very lately formed in the usurpation of Octavius Caesar, and 
not in a single instance transmitted by descent, so far as Paul's day. 

The Ruler for the People. — On the contrary, while we em- 
phatically ascribe the fact of civil government and the obligation 
to obey it, to the will of God, we also assert that in the secondary 
sense, the government is potentially the people. The original 
source of the power, the authority and the obligation to obey it, 
is God ; the human source is not an irresponsible Ruler, but the 
body of the ruled themselves, that is, the sovereignty, so far as it 
is human, resides in the people, and is held by the rulers, by dele- 
gation from them. It is, indeed, the ordinance of the supreme 
God, that such delegation should be made, and the power so dele- 
gated be obeyed, by each individual ; but still the power, so far as it 
is human, is the people's power, and not the ruler's. This is 
proved by two facts. All the citizens have a general native 
equality ; they possess a common title, in the general, to the bene- 
fits of existence, as being all human beings and children of a com- 
mon creator. They are all alike under the golden rule, which is 
God's great charter of a general equality. Hence the second fact, 
that the government is for the governed, not for the especial bene- 
fit of the governors. The object of the institution, which God had 
in view, was the good of the community. The people are not for 
the rulers, but the rulers for the people. This is expressly stated 
by Paul, Rom. 13: 3-4. Now, as before stated, the rulers have 
no monopoly of sense, virtue, experience, natural right, over 
their fellow-citizens; and hence the power of selecting rulers 
should be in the citizens. 

Social Contract Refuted. — 1. Not Founded on Facts. — 
Having thus cleared the Scriptural theory from the odious perver- 



302 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

sions of the advocates of "legitimacy," I proceed to affirm it 
against the vain dream of a social contract, and the theory of ob- 
ligation based upon it. 1st. It is notoriously false to the actual 
facts. Civil government is not only a theory, but a fact ; the 
origin of it can therefore be only found in a fact, not in a legal 
fiction. The fact is, that men never rightfully existed for one 
moment in the state of independent insulation, out of which they 
are supposed to have passed, by their own option, into a state of 
society. God never gave them such independency. Their re- 
sponsibility to Him, and their civic relations to fellow-men, as or- 
dained by God, are as native as their existence is. They do not 
choose their civic obligations, but are born under them ; just as a 
child is born to his filial obligations. And the simple, practical 
proof is, that if one man were now to claim this option to assume 
civic relations and obligations, or to decline them, and so forego 
the advantages of civic life, any civilized government on earth 
would laugh his claim to scorn, and would immediately compel his 
allegiance by force. The mere assumption of such an attitude as 
that imagined for the normal one of man, and of the act in which 
it is supposed government legitimately originates, would consti- 
tute him an outlaw ; a being whom every civil society claims a 
natural right to destroy, the right of self-preservation. 

Atheistic. — 2d. The theory is atheistic, utterly ignoring man's 
relation to his Creator, the right of that Creator to determine un- 
der what obligations man shall live ; and the great Bible fact, 
that God has determined he shall live under civic obligations. 

Not Inductive. — 3d. It is utterly unphilosophical in that, while 
the ethics of government should be an inductive science, this 
theory is, and by its very nature must be, utterly devoid of ex- 
perimental evidence ! Hence it has no claims to be even enter- 
tained for discussion, in for o scieniiae. 

Inconsistent. — 4th. If the authority of laws and constitutions 
and magistrates originates in the social contract, then certain 
most inconvenient and preposterous consequences would logically 
follow. One is, that however inconvenient and even ruinous, the 
institutions of the country might become, by reason of the changes 
of time and circumstance, no majority could ever righteously 
change them, against the will of any minority ; for the reason 
that the inconveniences of a bargain which a man has voluntarily 
made, are no justification for his breaking it. The righteous man 
must not change, though he has "sworn to his own heart." — 
Another inconvenience would be, that it could never be settled 
what were the terms agreed upon in the original social contract ; 
and what part of the existing laws were the accretions of time and 
of unwarranted power, save where the original constitution was in 
writing. A worse consequence would be, that if the compact 
originated the obligation to obey the civil magistrate, then any one 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 3o£ 

unconstitutional or unjust act of the ruler would break that com- 
pact. But when broken by one side, it is broken for both, and 
allegiance would be wholly voided. 

Last : The civil magistrate is armed with some powers, which 
could not have been created by a social contract alone, because 
they did not belong to the contracting parties, viz : individual 
men to give, for instance, the right of life and death. No man's 
life belongs to him, but to God alone. He cannot transfer what 
does not belong to him ; nor will it do to say, that although the 
individual may not have the right to delegate away a power over 
his own life which he does not possess, yet the community may 
be justified in assuming it, by the law of self-preservation. For 
there is no community as yet, until this theory of its derivation 
from a social contract is established. There is only a number of 
individual, unrelated, independent men. 

Natural Liberty what ? — Civil Liberty now differing ? — II. 
To elucidate and establish these ideas farther, let us inquire what 
is the true difference between man's natural liberty and his civil 
liberty. The advocates of the theory of a social compact seem to 
consider, as indeed some of them define, men's natural liberty to 
be a freedom to do what they please. They all say that Govern- 
ment limits or restrains it somewhat, the individual surrendering 
a part in order to have the rest better protected. Hence it follows, 
that all government, even the republican, being of the nature of 
restraint, is in itself a natural evil, and a natural infringement on 
right, to be endured only as an expedient for avoiding the greater 
evil of anarchy ! Well might such theorists deduce the conse- 
quence that there is no ethical ground for obedience to govern- 
ment, except the implied assent of the individual ; the question 
would be, whether it is not a surrender of duty to come under such 
an obligation ? They also, of course, confound a man's natural 
rights and natural liberties together ; they would be still more 
consistent, if, with their great inventor, Hobbes, they denied that 
there was any such thing as rights, distinct from might, until they 
were factitiously created by the restraints of civil government. 

Radical Theory false. — True stated. — This view I consider, 
although embraced in part by the eurrent of christian moralists, 
is only worthy of an atheist, who denies the existence of any 
original relations between the Creator and creature, and of any 
original moral distinctions. It ignores the great fact, that man's 
will never was his proper law ; it simply passes over, in the insane 
pride of human perfectionism, the great fact of original sin, by 
which every man's will is more or less inclined to do unrighteous- 
ness. It falsely supposes a state of nature, in which man's might 
makes his right ; whereas no man is righteously entitled to exist in 
that state for one instant. But if you would see how simple and 
impregnable is the Bible theory of natural and civil liberty, take 



304 SYLABUS AND NOTES 

these facts, undisputed by any christian. The rule of action is 
moral : moral obligations are as original (as natural) as man him- 
self. The practical source and measure of them is God's will. 
That will, ah initio, binds upon man certain relations and 
duties which he owes to God and to his fellow man ; and also de- 
fines his rights, i. e., those things which it is the duty of other 
beings to allow him to have and do. Man enters existence with 
those moral relations resting, by God's will, upon him. And a 
part of that will, as taught by His law and providence, is, that 
man shall be a member of and obey civil government. Hence, 
government is as natural as man is. What then is a man's natural 
liberty ? I answer : it is freedom to do whatever he has a moral right 
to do. Freedom to do whatever a man is physically able to do, is 
not a liberty of nature or law, but a natural license, a natural 
iniquity. What is civil liberty then ? I reply still, it is (under a 
just government) freedom to do whatever a man has a moral right 
to do. Perhaps no government is perfectly just. Some withhold 
more, some fewer of the citizens moral rights : more withhold them 
all. Under all governments there are some rights left ; and so 
some liberty. A fair and just government Avould be one that would 
leave to each subject of it, in the general, (excepting exceptional 
cases of incidental hardship,) freedom to do whatever he had a 
moral right to do, and take away all other, so far as secular and 
civic acts are concerned. Such a government then would not re- 
strain the natural liberty of the citizens at all. Their natural 
would be identical with their civic liberty. Government then does 
not originate our rights, neither can it take them away. Good 
government does originate our liberty in a practical sense, i. e., it 
secures the exercise of it to us. 

No Natural Right sacrificed to just Government. — The in- 
stance most commonly cited, as one of a natural right surrendered 
to civil society, is the right of self-defence. We accept the in- 
stance, and assert that it fully confirms our view. For if it means 
the liberty of forcible defence at the time the unprovoked aggres- 
sion is made, that is not surrendered ; it is allowed under all en- 
lightened governments fully. If it mean the privilege of a 
savage's retaliation, I deny that any human ever had such a right 
by nature. " Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." If it mean 
the privilege to attach the righteous temporal penalty, and execute 
it ourselves, on the aggressor, so as to deter him and others from 
similar assaults, I deny that this is naturally a personal right ; 
for nothing is more unnatural than for a man to be judge in his 
own case. Other instances of supposed loss of natural rights are 
alleged with more plausibility: as. when a citizen is restrained by 
law from selling his corn out of the country, (a thing naturally 
moral per se) from some economic motive of public good ; and yet 
the righteous citizen feels bound to obey. I reply : if the restric- 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 305 

tion of the government is not unjust, then there exists such a state 
of circumstances among the fellow citizens that the sale of the corn 
out of the county under those circumstances, would have been a 
natural breach of the law of righteousness and love towards them. 
So that, under the particular state of the case, the man's natural 
right to sell his corn had terminated. Natural rights may change 
with circumstances. 

Natural Equality What? — Golden Rule. — Here we may 
understand, in what sense "all men are by nature free and equal." 
Obviously no man is by nature free, in the sense of being born in 
possession of that vile license to do whatever he has will and phys- 
ical ability to do, which the infidel moralists understand by the 
sacred name of liberty. For every man is horn under obligation 
to God, to his parents, and to such form of government as may 
providentially be over his parents. (I may add, the obligation to 
ecclesiastical government is also native.) But all men have a na- 
tive title to that liberty which I have defined, viz : freedom to do 
what they have a moral right to do. But as rights differ, the 
amount of this freedom to which given men have a natural title, 
varies in different cases. But all men are alike in this ; that they 
all have the same general right by nature, to enjoy their own nat- 
ural quantum of freedom, be it what it may. Again : are all men 
naturally equal in strength, in virtue, in capacity, or in rights ? 
The thought is preposterous. The same man does not even con- 
tinue to have the same natural rights all the time. The female 
child is born Avith a different set of rights in part, from the male 
child of the same parents; because born to different native capa- 
cities and natural relations and duties. In what then are men nat- 
urally equal f I answer, first: in their common title to the seve- 
ral quantums of liberty appropriate to each, differing as they do 
in different men ; second, they are equal in their common humanity, 
and their common share in the obligations and benefits of the 
golden rule. All men are reciprocally bound to love their neigh- 
bors as themselves ; and to do unto others, as they would that oth- 
ers should do to them. Here is the great charter of Bible repub- 
licanism. Men have by nature, a general equality in this ; not a 
specific one. Hence, the general equality of nature will by no 
means produce a literal and universal equality of civil condition ; 
for the simple reason that the different classes of citizens have 
very different specific rights ; and this grows out of their differ- 
ences of sex, virtue, intelligence, civilization, &c, and the de- 
mands of the common welfare. Thus, if the low grade of intelli- 
gence, virtue and civilization of the African in America, disqualify 
him for being his own guardian, and if his own true welfare 
(taking the 'general run' of cases) and that of the community, 
would be plainly marred by this freedom ; then the law decides 
correctly, that the African here has no natural right to his self- 



306 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

control, as to his own labour and locomotion. Hence, his flatural 
liberty is only that which remains after that privilege is retrenched, 
Still he has natural rights, (to marriage, to a livelihood from his 
own labour, to the Sabbath, and to the seryice of God, and im- 
mortality, &c, &c). Freedom to enjoy all these, constitutes his 
natural liberty, and if the laws violate any of it causelessly, they 
are unjust. 

Proper 'Sphere of Civil Government. — III. The two remain- 
ing questions are more practical, and may be discussed more 
briefly. We discard the theocratic conception of civil govern- 
ment. The proper object of it is, in general* to secure to man 
his life, liberty, and property, i. e. his secular rights. Man's in- 
tellectual and spiritual concerns belong to different jurisdictions ; 
the parental and the ecclesiastical. The evidence is, that the pa-* 
rental, and the ecclesiastical departments of duty and right 
are separately recognized by Scripture and distinctly fenced off* 
as independent circles. (See also Jno. 18: 35, 36 ; Luk. 12: 14; 
2 Cor. 10: 4; Matt. 22: 21). The powers of the civil magistrate 
then, are limited by righteousness, (not always by facts) to these 
general functions, regulating and adjudicating all secular rights t 
and protecting all members of civil society in their enjoyment of 
their several proper shares thereof. This general function implies 
a number of others ; prominently, these three : taxation, punish- 
ment, including capital for capital crimes, and defensive war. For 
the first, (see Matt. 22: 21 ; Rom. 13: 6, 7 ;) for the second, (see 
Gen. 9: 5, 6 ; Numb. 35: 33 : Rom. 13: 1-5;) for the third, (Ex. 
17: 9 and passim in Old Testament ; Luke 3: 14, 15; Acts 10* 1,2.) 
The same thing follows from the power of capital punishment. 
Aggressive war is wholesale murder. The magistrate who is 
charged with the sword, to avenge and prevent domestic murder, 
is a fortiori charged to punish and prevent the foreign murderer. 

Duty of Christians to Unjust Civil Government. — But, 
few governments are strictly just ; and the inquiry therefore 
arises : How shall the christian citizen act, under an oppressive 
command of the civil magistrate ? I reply, if the act which he 
requires is not positively a sin per se, it must be obeyed, although 
in obeying we surrender a clear, moral right of our own. The 
proof is the example of the Bible Saints — -the fact that the very 
government to which Paul and Peter challenged obedience as a 
christian duty, was far from being an equitable one ; and the truth 
that a harsh and unjust government is a far less evil than the ab- 
sence of all government. The duty of obedience, does not, as we 
have seen, spring out of our assent, nor from the government's 
being the one of our choice, but from the providence of God 
which placed us under it, coupled with the fact that government is 
His ordinance. If the thing commanded by the civil magistrate 
is positively sinful, then the christian citizen must refuse obedi- 
ence, but yield submission to the penalty therefor. Of course, he 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 307 

is entitled, while submitting either in this or the former case, to 
seek the peaceable repeal of the sinful law or command ; but that 
he is bound to disobey it in the latter case, is clear from the ex- 
ample of the apostles and martyrs ; Acts 4:19; 5: 29 ; and from 
the obvious consideration, that since the civil magistrate is but 
God's minister, it is preposterous God's power committed to him 
should be used to pull down God's authority. But does not 
the duty of disobeying imply that there ought to be an immunity 
from penalty for so doing? I reply, of course, in strict justice, 
there ought; but this is one of those rights which the private 
christian may not defend by violence against the civil magistrate. 
The magistrate is magistrate still, and his authority in all things, 
not carrying necessary guilt in the compliance, is still binding, 
notwithstanding his unrighteous command. To suffer is not sin 
perse: hence, although when he commanded you to sin, you re- 
fused, when he commands you to suffer for that refusal, you ac- 
quiesce. It should be again remembered, that an unjust govern- 
ment is far better than none at all. It is God's will that such a 
government, even, should be obeyed by individuals, rather than 
have anarchy. If a man holds office under a government, and the 
official function enjoined upon him is positive sin, it is his duty to 
resign, giving up his office and its emoluments along with its re- 
sponsibilities, and then he has no more concern with the unright- 
eous law, than any other private citizen. That concern is simply 
to seek its repeal by constitutional means. If the majority, or 
other controlling force in the constitution make that appeal unat- 
tainable for him, then the private citizen is clear of the sin, and 
has no concern with the sinful law. He is neither bound, nor per- 
mitted to resist it by force. But for an official of government to hold 
office, promise official obedience, and draw his compensation there- 
for, and yet undertake to refuse to perform the official duties of 
his place, on the ground that his conscience tells him the acts are 
morally wrong ; this is but a disgusting compound of pharisaism, 
avarice and perjury. Thus we have, in a nutshell, the true doc- 
trine of a "higher law," as distinguished from the spurious. 

Right of Private Judgment Asserted. — One more question 
remains : Who is to be the judge when the act required of the citizen 
by law is morally wrong ? I reply, the citizen himself, in the last 
resort. This is the great Protestant and Scriptural doctrine of 
private judgment. We sustain it by the obvious fact, that when 
the issue is thus made between the government and its citizen, if 
that is to be absolute judge in its own case, there is an end of 
personal independence and liberty. But the government's judg- 
ment being thus set aside, there remains no other human umpire. 
2d. Every intelligent being lies under moral relations to God, 
which are immediate and inevitable. No creature in the universe 
can answer for him, in a case of conscience, or step between him 



308 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

and his guilt. Hence, it is the most monstrous and unnatural in- 
justice that any power should dictate to his conscience, except his 
divine Judge. See Prov. 9: 12 ; Rom. 14: 4. The clear example 
of Bible saints sustains this, as cited above ; for while they clearly 
recognized the legitimacy of the magistrate's authority, they claim 
the privilege of private judgment in disobeying their commands 
to sin. If it be said that this doctrine is in danger of introducing 
disorder and insubordination, I answer, no ; not under any gov- 
ernment that at all desires to stand; for when the right of private 
judgment is thus exercised, as an appeal to God's judgment, and 
with the fact before our faces, that if we feel bound to disobey 
the law, we shall be still bound to submit meekly to the penalty, 
none of us will be apt to exercise the privilege too lightly. 

Right of Revolution Discussed. — IV. Thus far, we have con- 
sidered the individual action of the citizen towards an unrighteous 
government, and have shown that, even when constrained to dis- 
obey an unrighteous law, he must submit to the penalty. Do we 
then inculcate the slavish doctrine of passive obedience, which 
asserts the divine and irresponsible right of kings, so that even 
though they so abuse their powers that the proper ends of govern- 
ment are lost, God forbids resistance ? By no means. To Ameri- 
cans, whose national existence and glory are all founded on the 
" right of revolution," slight. arguments would probably be needed 
to support it. But, it is the duty of thinking men to have some 
better support for their opinions, than the popularity of them. 

Argument for Passive Obedience Refuted. — The argument 
for passive obedience, from Romans 13th, is, at first view, plausi- 
ble, but will not bear inquiry. Note that the thing which is there 
declared to be of divine authority, is not a particular form of gov- 
ernment, but submission to the government, whatever it is. God 
has not ordained what government mankind shall live under, but 
only that they shall live under a government. The end of gov- 
ernment is not the gratification of the rulers, but the good of the 
ruled. When a form of government entirely ceases, as a whole, 
to subserve its proper end, is it still to subsist forever ? This is 
preposterous. Who then is to change it ? The submissionists say, 
Providence alone. But Providence works by means. Shall those 
means be external force or internal force ? These are the only 
alternatives; for of course corrupt abuses will not correct them- 
selves, when their whole interest is to be perpetuated. External 
force is unauthorized ; for nothing is clearer than that a nation 
should not interfere, uncalled, in the affairs of another. Again : 
we have seen that the sovereignty is in the people rather than the 
rulers ; and that the power the rulers hold is delegated. May the 
people never resume their own. when it is wholly abused to their 
injury? There may be obviously a point then where "resistance 
to tyrants is obedience to God." The meaning of the apostle is, 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 309 

that this resistance must be the act, not of the individual, but of 
the people. The insubordination which he condemns, is that which 
arrays against a government, bad like that of the Caesars perhaps, 
the worse anarchy of the individual will. But the body of the 
citizens is the commonwealth ; and when the commonwealth arises 
and supercedes the abused authority of her public servants, the 
allegiance of the individual is due to her, just as before to her 
servants. But it may be asked, How can the commonwealth move 
to do this, except by the personal movement of individuals against 
the " powers that be ?" I answer, (and this explains the true 
nature of the right of revolution :) true : but if the individual 
moves, when he is not inspired by the movement of the popular 
heart ; when his motion is not the exponent, as well as the occa- 
sion, of theirs, he has made a mistake — he has done wrong — he 
must bear his guilt. It is usually said, as by Paley, that a revo- 
lution is only justifiable when the evils of the government are 
worse than the probable evils of the convulsive change ; and when 
there is a reasonable prospect of success. The latter point is 
doubtful. Some of the noblest revolutions, as that of Tell, were 
rather the result of indignation at intolerable wrong, and a gene- 
rous despair, than of this calculation of chances of success. 



LECTURE LXXIL 



SYLLABUS. 

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 

1. Establish the doctrine of Religious Liberty and the right of Private Judg- 
ment. 

2. Discuss and refute the theory of Church Establishments held by Prelatists, 
and that of Chalmers. 

3. What are the proper relations between State and Church ? And what the 
powers and duties of the civil magistrate over ecclesiastical persons and 
property? 

Conf. of Faith, chap. xx. and chap, xxiii., §3. Locke's first Letter on 
Toleration. Milton's Areopagitica, or Plea for the Liberty of Unlicensed 
Printing. Vattel, Law of Nature and Nations ; book I., chap. 12. Mon- 
tesquieu Esprit des Lois, book xxv. Chalmers on Church Establishments. 
Gladstone's Church and State. Review of Gladstone, by Lord Macaulay. 

The Question not Obsolete. — I. You may suppose it super- 
flous to lecture on a subject so well understood, and universally 
admitted, as this is among us ; but you will be mistaken. Our 
ancestors understood it because they had studied it, with all the 
earnestness of persecuted men, who had to contend with sword 



310 SYLABUS AND NOTES 

and pen. We hold their correct theory ; but, it is to be feared, 
only by prescription and prejudice. Consequence: that when 
temptation comes, and the theory of religious liberty seems awk- 
ward just at a particular juncture, we shall be carried about with 
any wind of doctrine. This is ever the course ; for fundamental 
truths to be practically learned by one generation, handed down 
to the next, held by prejudice for a few generations, [the words used 
and sense dropped] and at last lost in practice. 

Again, many, even of statesmen, do not defend Religious Lib- 
erty on sound and rational grounds. Even Brougham and Ma- 
caulay (see his History of England) seem not to have found out 
that the proposition, " man is not responsible for his belief," is not 
the same with that of Religious Liberty. 

Augustine First Advocate of Persecution. — The arguments 
by which Augustine induced persecution of the Donatists have 
ever been the staple ones of the Roman Church, for intolerance. 
They are so wretched and flimsy, as to be unworthy of a separate 
discussion. Their answer will be apparent in the sequel. But id 
should be observed, that the doctrines of intolerance are consistent, 
with the claims of the Romish Church to infallibility, and suprem- 
acy. A man ought not to have liberty to destroy his own soul 
by refusing the infallible teachings of God, on earth. This claim 
of infallibility puts the relations between the unbeliever and 
Church, on the same footing as those between the unbeliever and 
his God. To both he is guilty. But is the claim of infallibility 
to be implicitly admitted ? The answer to this question shows 
that a denial of the right of private judgment, is essential to the 
Romanists' intolerance. For if the infallibility is to be brought into 
question, then the basis of the right to enforce absolute conform- 
ity is melted away. 

Heresy is Criminal . — A far more plausible argument for the 
right to enforce religious conformity has been glanced at by later 
Romish writers. Hard to answer by many a Protestant, who in- 
considerately holds to Religious Liberty, " man is responsible for 
his belief. His religious error is not simply his misfortune, but 
his crime. Bad volitions are at the bottom. Truth is discover- 
able, certain. This crime has a very certain, though indirect evil 
influence ; this not only on men's religious, but secular conducts 
and interests. The heretic injures the public morals, health, 
order, wealth, the value of real estate, &c, &c. He may be doing 
mischief on a far larger scale than the bandit. Now, if his reli- 
gious belief is of a moral quality, voluntary and criminal; and is 
also mischievous — highly so ; and that to the interests both 
Church and State protect, why not punishable ? Why does it 
claim to be exempted from the list of offences amenable to law ? 
The cruel abuses of the power of punishing heretics, by ignorant 
or savage rulers, are no argument against its use, any more than 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 311 

the Draconian penalties, against moderate power in the magistrate^ 
of repressing secular crimes." Ans. 

But Force not the Remedy.— Every thing which is moral 
evil, and is detrimental to the interests of society, is not, there- 
fore, properly punishable by society (e. g. prodigality, indolence., 
gluttony, drunkenness). The thing must be, moreover, shown to 
be brought within the scope of the penalties, b\ the objects and 
purposes of Government ; and the relevancy of corporeal pains 
and penalties to be a useful corrective ; and the directness of the 
concern of society in its bad consequences. Society may not in- 
fringe directly a natural right of one of its members, to protect 
itself from an indirect injury which may or may not occur. It 
only has a right to stand on the defensive, and wait for the overt 
aggression. It is not the business of society to keep a man from 
injuring himself, but from injuring others. As to his personal 
interests, he is his own master. Now that religious error, though 
moral evil, voluntary and guilty, does not come within the above 
conditions, we will show, and at the same time will adduce argu- 
ments of a positive weight. 

State and Church have Different Objects.— 1. Premise, 
Church and State are distinct institutions, since theocratic institu- 
tions are done away; have distinct objects. The Church is to 
teach men the way to Heaven, and to help them thither. The 
State is to protect each citizen in the enjoyment of temporal rights. 
The Church has no civil pains and penalties at command ; because 
Christ has given her none ; and because they have no relevancy 
whatever to produce her object — the hearty belief of saving 
truth (see John 18 1 36 ; 2 Cor. 10:4, &c). The main weapon 
of the Civil Government is civil pains and penalties (Rom. 13 : 4). 

State has only Delegated Powers. — 2. Premise. In the 
State, the good of the governed being the object, ( in temporal in- 
terests ) the governed are the earthly sources of sovereignty. 
Rulers have only a delegated power, and are the agents of the 
community, who depute to them, for the general good, so much 
of power as is necessary. 

Spiritual Judge has no Civil Penalties.— Now, for the di- 
rect argument, observe : The Church's bearing penal power, and 
being armed with civil pains, is utterly inconsistent with her spirit- 
ual character, her objects, and the laws of Christ. Rome herself 
did not claim it. When the Church persecutes, it is through the 
commonwealth. This lends its corporeal power to the Church, 
When Romish Priests persecute, they bear twofold capacity, mag- 
isterial and clerical. 

Magistrate has no Spiritual Jurisdiction. — I. But, by what 
power shall the magistrate persecute his own Sovereign ? Whence 
delegated ? All the power he has is delegated. Now a citizen 
cannot delegate to another the right of judging for him what is 



SI 2 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

right, because to do so is a self-contradiction, and unutterable 
absurdity ; and because, to do so would be a crime. For the merit 
of all my religious belief and acting depends on my free conscien- 
tious convictions ; and God has made me responsible for them, so 
that I cannot give away the responsibility. 

Nor Right to Arrest my Private Judgment.— II. By the 
same general fact, it appears that when intolerance commands me 
to surrender my private judgment in religion, it is to the Magis* 
trate I surrender it; i. e„, a man not sacred, nor even clerical, an 
officer purely secular; and even upon Romish teachings, no more 
entitled than me, to judge in religion. But, it is said, "the Mag- 
istrate persecutes not for himself, but on behalf of a Church in- 
fallible and divinely authorized, to which he has dutifully bowed, 
and lent his secular power, as he ought; so that it is to this infal- 
lible Church we are compelled by the Magistrate's sword to sur- 
render our private judgment." No; how did the Magistrate find 
out that this Church is infallible ? Suppose I, the subject, choose 
to dispute it ? who shall decide between us ? Not the Church in 
question; because the very question in debate between us is, 
whether the Church ought to be allowed a supreme authority over 
my, or his conscience. It is to the civil Magistrate's judgment, 
after all, that I am compelled to yield my private judgment, and 
that in a thing purely religious. 

Magistrates not even Christians. — 3. The civil authority of 
the magistrate is not due to his Christianity, but to his official 
character. This follows from the entire distinctness of the church 
and state in their objects and characters. Proved by Scripture 
asserting the civil authority of Pagan magistrates ; Matt. 22 : 21, 
Rom. 13, 1 Peter 2 : 13. If we were citizens of a Mahommedan 
or pagan country we should owe obedience to their civil rulers in 
things temporal. And this shows that the authority is not depen- 
dent on the magistrate's Christianity, even where he happens to be 
a christian. Now what an absurdity is it for that which is not 
christian at all to choose my Christianity for me ? To see this, 
only suppose a case where the magistrate is actually infidel. The 
Greeks and Protestants in Constantinople struggle with each other. 
The Turk, more sensible than intolerant christians, merely stands 
by and derides both. But suppose one of them should manage to 
get Him on their side, and use his temporal power to persecute 
their bretheren ? Can a Turkish infidel, Avho has nothing to do 
with Christianity, confer on one sect a power to persecute another ? 
Confer what he has not ? Outrageous. But the reason of the 
thing is the same in any other country ; because the civil authority 
of the magistrate is no more due to his Christianity than that of 
the Grand Turk in Turkey, who has no Christianity. 

Which Religion shall coerce ? — 4. But suppose the persecu- 
ting church repudiates the aid of the magistrate, and claims that 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 313 

she herself, as a spiritual power, is entitled to wield both swords, 
temporal and spiritual, for suppression of error, in person, as Rome 
does in some of her more imperious moods. Then all the absurdi- 
ties are incurred which arise from confounding the two opposite 
societies of church and state and their objects ; and all the Scrip- 
tures above quoted must be defied. But other arguments still 
more unanswerable apply. Among competing religious commu- 
nions, which shall have the right to coerce the others ? Of course, 
the orthodox one, This is ever the ground of the claim. " I am 
right and you are wrong : therefore I must compel you to think 
as I do." But each communion is orthodox in its own eyes. 
Every one is erroneous to its rivals. If Rome says, there are 
evidences of our being the apostolic infallible church, so clear, that 
no one can resist them without obstinate guilt, Geneva says to 
Rome just the same. Whatsoever any church believes, it believes 
to be true. There is no umpire under God ; shall the magistrate 
decide? He has no right. He is not religious. There is no 
umpire. Each one's claim to persecute is equally good. The 
strongest rules. Might makes right. 

Coercion not a means to Faith. — 5. But again : The church 
cannot use persecution to gain her end, which is the belief of 
religious truth ; because penalties have no relevancy whatever to 
beget belief. Evidence begets conviction ; not fear and pain. 
While we do not think that belief or unbelief of moral truth is 
of no moral character, with Brougham, we do know that it must 
be the voluntary, spontaneous result of evidence, and that it must 
be rational. That a spiritual society, whose object is to produce 
moral beliefs and acts determined thereby, should do it by civil 
pains, is an infinite absurdity. This is enhanced by the other 
fact : that the virtue and efficacy of religious belief and acts before 
God depend wholly on their heartiness and sincerity. Feigned 
belief, unwilling service, are no graces, but sins. Do not save, 

but damn Nor do persecutions have any preparing 

effect to open the mind to the rational and moral means which the 
church is afterwards to use. This the Augustinian plea. To 
punish, imprison, impoverish, torment, burn a man, because he 
does not see your arguments as strong as you think them, is surely 
a strange way of making him favorable thereto ! To give him the 
strongest cause to hate the reasoner, is a strange way to make him 
like the reasonings ! The most likely possible way is taken to 
give him an ill opinion of that communion he is wished to join. 
These measures have some natural tendency, on weak natures, to 
make hypocrites ; but none to make sincere believers. 

Persecution prejudices Truth. — Under this head, too, notice 
the outrageous impolicy of persecuting measures. Supposing the 
doctrines persecuted to be erroneous, the very way is taken to 
make them popular, by arraying on their side the sentiments of 



314 SYLABUS AND NOTES 

injured right, virtuous indignation, sympathy with the oppressed , 
and in general, all the noblest principles, and to make the oppo- 
sing truth unpopular, by associating it with high handed oppres- 
sion, cruelty, &c. The history is, that no communion ever perse- 
cuted which did not cut its own throat thereby, unless it persecu- 
ted so as to crush and brutify wholly, and trample out all active 
religious life pro or con to itself. The persecuting communion 
dies, either by the hand of the outraged and irresistible reaction 
it produces ; or if the persecution is thorough, by the syncope and 
atrophy of a spiritual stagnation, that leaves it a religious com- 
munion only in name. Of the former, the examples are the Epis- 
copacy of Laud, in Scotland and England, Colonial Church of 
Virginia against Baptists, &c. Of the latter, the Popish Church 
of France, Spain, Italy. " The blood of the martyrs is the seed 
of the Church." 

Intrudes into God's Province. — 6. All acts of religious in- 
tolerance are inconsistent with the relations which God has estab- 
lished between Himself and rational souls. Here is the main point. 
God holds every soul directly responsible to Himself. That re- 
sponsibility necessarily implies that no one shall step in between 
him and his God. No one can relieve him of his responsibility, 
answer for him to God, and bear his punishment, if he has be- 
trayed his duty. Therefore no one should interfere to hinder his 
judging for himself. " What hast thou to do, to judge another 
man's servant ?" Here it is plain how essential the claim of in- 
fallibility is to a plausible theory of persecution. For a man who 
acknowledges himself fallible, to intrude his leadership by force 
on his fellow-man, who is no more fallible than himself, when it is 
possible he may thereby ruin his soul, is a position as satanic as 
impudent. But where the persecutor can say, " I know infallibly 
that my way is right, and if he will come into it he will certainly 
be saved," there is a little plausibility. But if infallibility is dis- 
proved, that little is gone. And more : Each man is directly 
bound to his God to render a belief and service hearty ; proceeding 
primarily from a regard to God's will, not man's. Else it is sin. 
Now how impious is he, who, professing to contend for God, thus 
thrusts himself between God and His creature ? Substitutes fear 
of him for fear of God ! Thrusts himself into God's place ? He 
that does it is an anti-Christ. Man's belief is a thing sacred, in- 
violable. 

7. Let it be added, also, that persecutions ruin that cause which 
they profess to promote, the cause of God, by demoralizing tho 
persecuting community. They tend to confound and corrupt all 
moral ideas in the populace, who see moral, merciful, peaceful men 
punished with the pains due to the most atrocious crimes, because 
they do not take certain arguments in a certain way. They beget 
on the one hand subserviency, hypocrisy, cunning, falsehood and 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 315 

deceit, the weapons of oppressed weakness; and on the other, 
cruelty, unmercifulness, rapacity, injustice. Ages of persecution 
have always been ages of deep moral corruption ; aud where per- 
secution has been successful, it has plunged the nations into an 
abyss of vice and relaxed morals. 

Persection Aggravates Divisions. — 8. Again : we have 
hinted at the tendency of intolerance to disappoint its own ends. 
All history is a commentary on this. More persecution, the more 
sects, (except where it is so extreme as to produce a religious 
paralysis, and there there are no sects, because there is no belief, 
but only stupid apathy or secret atheism). Rome tried it to the 
full. And under her regime, Christendom was more and more full 
of sectaries, who increased till the freedom of the Reformation 
extinguished them. Waldenses, Albigenses, Cathari, Paulicians, 
Beghards, Fratricelli, Turlupins, Brethren of Free Spirit, Wick- 
liffeites, Hussites, &c, &c. There have always been wider diver- 
gences of doctrinal opinion, within the bosom of the Romish 
Church itself, than there are now, between all the evangelical 
branches of the Protestant family, with all their freedom. And 
the effect of the Reformation, (most in freest countries,) has been 
to kill off, or render perfectly impotent, all more extravagant and 
hurtful sects. Where are any Turlupins, or mystical Pantheists 
like those of Germany of the 14th Century? Where any Schwes- 
triones ? Manichaeans ? 

9. Religious sects are nearly harmless to the State, when they 
are no longer persecuted. It is wholly to their oppression that 
their supposed factiousness is due ; cease to oppress, and they be- 
come mild and loyal. This is just the absurd and treacherous 
trick of persecutors, to say, "conventicles are secret," when it is 
their oppression which makes them secret. They would gladly be 
open, if they might have leave. "Conventicles are factious ;" it 
is injustice which makes them factious. Let the State treat all 
sectaries justly and mildly, and they at once have the strongest 
motive ,to be true to the State ; indeed, the same which the majority 
has ; that of strongest self-interest. 

Coercion Hypocritical. — 10. Persecution for conscience' sake 
is always supremely false and hypocritical, as appears by this 
fact. The motive assigned by persecuting religionists is, that the 
souls of men may be saved from the ruinous effects of error ; of 
the heretic himself, if he can be reclaimed ; of others whom he 
might corrupt, at any rate. But while they have been imprison- 
ing, tormenting, burning men of innocent morals, because they 
held some forbidden tenets, have they not always tolerated the 
grossest vices in those who would submit to the Church ? Adultery, 
profanity, violence, ignorance, drunkenness, gluttony ? Was it 
not so during all the Inquisition in Spain and Italy, Laud's per- 
secutions in England, James' in Scotland ? But a bad life is the 



316 SYLLABUS AND NOTES. 

worst heresy. Surely this destroys souls and corrupts communi- 
ties. Why do not these men then, who so vehemently love the 
souls of their neighbours, that they must burn their bodies to 
ashes, love the vicious enough to restrain their vices ? Persecu- 
tion for opinion's sake is wholly a political measure cloaked under 
religion. Its true object always is, to secure domination, not to 
save souls. 

Conclusion. — This, therefore, is the only safe theory. The 
ends of the State are for time and earth ; those of the Church are 
for eternity. The weapon of the State is corporeal, that of the 
Church is spiritual. The two cannot be combined, without con- 
founding heaven and earth. The only means that can be used to 
produce religious belief are moral. No man is to be visited with 
any civil penalty for his belief, as long as he does not directly 
infringe upon the purpose of the government, which is the protec- 
tion of the temporal rights of his fellow-citizens. The State is 
bound to see that every man enjoys his religious freedom un- 
touched, because the right to this religious freedom is a secular, 
or political right. 

The doctrine of religious liberty was not evolved at the Refor- 
mation. Protestants held it a right and duty to persecute heretics . 
"Rome's guilt was that she persecuted those nearer right than 
herself, and did it cruelly and unjustly." The first treatise taking 
the true ground, as far as I know, was written by Brown (founder 
of sect of Brownists). Dr. Jno. Owen wrote for the same cause. 
Dr. Jeremy Taylor wrote his plea for liberty of prophesying. — 
Milton and Locke are well known. Roger Williams, of Rhode 
Island, perhaps deserves the credit of being the first Ruler in the 
world, who granted absolute freedom to all sects, having power to 
do otherwise. 

Church and State. — The Protestant Churches all Estab- 
lished. — II. The separation and independence of Church and State 
was not only not the doctrine of the Reformation. No christian 
nation holds it to this day, except ours. In 17th and 18th centu- 
ries some Independents and others in England, and Seceders in 
Scotland, advocated such separation, but were branded as out- 
rageous radicals. All the Reformation Churches, Lutheran and 
Reformed, held it as an axiom, that the State had, under God, the 
supreme care of religion. Dissenters of England now usually 
hold our views, (as well as Seceders in Scotland), called there 
voluntaryism. The Free Church at the head of whom was Dr. 
Chalmers, held to establshments. Ours is the first fair trial. 

Establishments Justified by two Theories. — The Prelatic. — 
Two theories of Church establishments prevail among nominal 
Protestants. The higher is that squinted at briefly in Vattel, Bk. 
I. Ch. 12, § 129, and more fully developed by Gladstone, Church 
and State, Chap. 2. That the government is instituted for the 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 317 

highest good of the whole in every concern, and is bound to do all 
it has in its reach for this object in every department. That a com- 
monwealth is a moral person, having a personality, judgment, con- 
science, responsibility, and is therefore bound, as a body, to recog- 
nize and obey the true religion. Hence the State must have its 
religion, as a State. This a necessary duty of its corporate or 
individual nature. Hence it must profess this, by State acts. It 
must of course have a religious test for office, because otherwise 
the religious character of the State would be lost ; and it must use 
its State power to propagate this State religion. 

Let us discuss the abstract grounds of this theory first ; then 
take up the second, or freer theory of Church establishments, 
and conclude with some general historical views applicable to both 
theories. 

Vattel's View. — 1. Says Vattel: "If all men are bound to 
serve God, the entire nation in her national capacity is doubtless 
bound to serve and honour Him. This is based on a general prin- 
ciple : that all men are everywhere bound by laws of nature; and 
therefore the entire nation, whose common will is but the united 
wills of all the members, must be bound by these natural laws ; 
because the accident of association cannot release men from bonds 
that are universal." (See § 5.) This is true in a sense, but not 
the sense necessary to prove a state religion obligatory. So far 
as any acts of any associated body of men have any moral or re- 
ligious character, they should conform to the same moral and reli- 
gious rules, by which the individuals are bound. But (a.) the ob- 
ligation is nothing else but the individual obligation of all the 
members, and nothing more is needed to defend or sanction it than 
their individual morality and religiousness. And (b) there are 
associations whose objects are not directly religious, but secular. 
How can they appropriately have a corporate religious character, 
when their corporate character has no direct reference to re- 
ligion. 

Gladstone's View. — Gladstone puts the same argument sub- 
stantially, calling it his ethical argument. "A State is a corpo- 
ration. It has personality, judgment, reason, foresight. Its acts 
have moral character. The only safe and sufficient basis of morals 
is Christianity ; therefore they should have christian character. 
All things we do have religious relations and responsibilities ; 
therefore the acts of rulers as such, should have a christian char- 
acter. In a word, a State is a moral person, corporately regarded, 
and like any other person, must have its personal christian char- 
acter. Else it is antichristian, and atheistic." Mr. Macaulay, 
(Ed. Review, 1839,) so terribly damaged this argument, by point- 
ing out that, by this reasoning, it was made the duty of armies, 
Banking, Insurance, Gas, Railroad, Stage Coach companies, Art 
Unions, incorporate clubs, &c, &c, to have a corporate religion 



31$ SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

(consider the absurdities,) that in his second edition, the author 
modified and fortified it. "These corporations are trivial, partial. 
Everybody not bound to belong to one ; their operations not 
far reaching, not of divine appointment, temporary. But there 
are two natural associations of men, alike in these three funda- 
mental traits. They are of divine appointment ; they are per- 
petual ; they embrace everybody, i. e., every human being is 
bound to belong to them ; they are the family and the State. All 
good men admit that the family ought to have a family religion. 
The State, a similar institution, a larger family, ought to have a 
State-religion." 

This is the only ingenious and plausible thing in his book. The 
nature of the reasoning compels us to discuss the fundamental 
questions as to the constitution and objects of civil society. For 
our answer must take this shape. The family association is wholly 
dissimilar from the commonwealth ; because its direct objects are 
not the same. The source and nature of the authority are not the 
same. There is not the same inferiority in the governed to the 
governors ; and there is not the same affection and interest. 

(Remember, however, the fact that all men are bound to be 
members of some family and State, has no relevancy to prove that 
these associations must have religious corporate character, unlike all 
other partial societies. Nor does the fact that they are not volun- 
tary, but of divine appointment ; because under certain circum- 
stances, it may be of divine appointment that men should belong 
to an army ; and this does not prove that an army ought to profess 
a religion as such) . 

State and Chuech have Different Ends. — The object of the 
family as to children, is to promote their whole welfare. The ob- 
ject of civil government is simply the protection of temporal rights 
against aggression, foreign or domestic. But this is just the view 
which all claimants for high powers in governments deny. Like 
Mr. Gladstone, they claim that the proper view of government is, 
that it is an association intended to take in hand all the interests 
and welfare of human beings, of every kind ; everything in which 
man is interested, and in which combination can aid in success, is 
the proper end of human government. It is to pan ? The total 
human association. Now, the plain answers to this are three : 
the Bible says the contrary. Rom. 13: 4. It is utterly impracti- 
cable ; for, by the necessary imperfection of human nature, an 
agency which is best adapted to one function must be worst adapted 
to others ; and an association which should do every thing, would 
be sure to do all in the worst possible manner. But last, and 
chiefly ; if this is true, then there cannot be any other association 
of human beings, except as it is a part and creature of the State. 
There is no Church. The State is the Church, and ecclesiastical 
persons and assemblies are but magistrates engaged in one part 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 319 

of their functions. There is no such thing as the family, an inde- 
pendent, original institution of divine appointment. The parent 
is but the delegate of the government, and when he applies the 
birch to the child, it is in fact, by State authority ! All combi- 
nations, to trade, to do banking business, to teach, to preach, to 
navigate, to buy pictures, to nurse the sick, to mine, &c, &c, are 
parts and creatures of the State ! Or if it be said that the State, 
though it has the right to do every thing, is not bound to do every 
thing, unless she finds it convenient and advantageous, then the 
ethical argument is relinquished ; and the ground of expediency 
assumed, on which we will remark presently. But the ethical ar- 
gument fails, also. 

(a.) In this : That it makes it the right and duty of the Sultan 
to establish Mohammedanism ; the King of Spain, Popery ; Queen 
Victoria, Prelacy; the Emperor of China, Boodhism, &c. Julian 
was right in ousting Christians, Theodosius, Platonists, Constan- 
tius, Athanasians ; Jovian, Arians. For if the State is a moral per- 
son, bound to have and promote its religion, the Sovereign must 
choose his religion conscientiously. The one he believes right, 
he must enforce. This is admitted by the advocates. Now, of 
all the potentates on earth, there is but one, that would conscien- 
tiously advocate what these men think the right religion — Prelacy. 
How sensible is that theory which, in the present state of the 
world, would ensure the teaching of errors, by all the authority 
of the governments over all the world, except in one kingdom ? 

Hence, Agencies oe one Unfit foe, Other. — (b.) If strictly 
carried out, it would ensure the worst governing, and the worst 
preaching, possible. An organization intended for a particular 
end, should choose agents best adapted to subserve that end, irre- 
spective of other things. Otherwise, it will be miserably ineffi- 
cient. And if it is best organized for that end, it must, for that 
very reason, be ill adapted to a different end. Hence, there should 
be no jumbling of functions ; but each institution should be left 
to siibserve its own objects. Suppose the British Government act 
out this theory. It must say to the skillful and honest financier : 
" You shall not help in my treasury, because you do not believe 
in Apostolic Succession ;" to the Presbyterian General : " I will 
have none of your courage and skill to release my armies from 
probable destruction, because you listen to a preacher who never 
had a Prelate's hands on his head ;" to the faithful pilot : " You 
shall not steer one of my ships off a lee shore, because you take 
the communion sitting," &c. How absurd; and how utter the 
failure of a government thus conducted ! 

(c.) By the same reason that it is the duty of the State to use 
a part of its power to propagate its religion, it is its duty to use 
all ; and the doctrine of persecution for opinion's sake is neces- 
sary inference. For the State has power to fine, imprison, kill. 



320 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

No Church Established to Control Clergy. — II. (Before 
we proceed to the more plausible and liberal theory advanced by 
Vattel, Warburton, Chalmers, &c, let us notice a point urged by 
the first mentioned, in § 139, &c. : That there must be a connex- 
ion between Church and State, in order that the Sovereign may 
have control over ecclesiastics and religion. If men wielding such 
immense spiritual influences, are not held in official subordination 
to the Chief Ruler, he cannot govern the country. It would be 
a sufficient reply to say that Vattel knew Church officers, chiefly 
as Papists. Take away their power of the keys, their exemption 
from civil jurisdiction, and their ecclesiastical dependence on a 
foreign Pope, and the difficulty is gone. The minister of religion 
should be a citzen, subject to all laws, liable to be punished for 
any overt crime committed or prompted by him. This is subordi- 
nation enough. As for the power still left him to inculcate doc- 
trines of dangerous tendency, unchecked by the State, the proper 
defence is free discussion. The medicine of error is not violent 
repression, but light. Let the Ruler content himself with protect- 
ing and diffusing free discussion. And again, Vattel's argument 
may, with equal justice, be extended to political teachers ; and 
then the freedom of the press and of speech is gone). 

Chalmer's View. — But we come now to what we may call the 
Chalmerian theory. " The proper object of civil government is 
man's secular well-being. But the right to prosecute this, implies 
the right to perform all those functions which are essential to the 
main end — yea, the duty. Public morals are essential to the 
public welfare. The only source of public morals is Christianity. 
Christianity will not be sufficiently diffused, unless the State lends 
its aid and means to do it. Therefore it is right, yea, binding, 
that the State shall enter into an alliance with Christianity (in that 
form or forms best adapted to the end), to teach its citizens reli- 
gion and morals, as a necessary means for the public good. To 
fail to do so, is for the State to betray its charge." 

The contested point here, is in these propositions : That " vol- 
untaryism " will usually fail to diffuse a sufficient degree of pub- 
lic morals ; and that a State-endowed Church, or churches, of good 
character and spiritual independence will do it far better. And on 
this point, all the divisions of " Dissent," splitting up of small 
communities until the congregations are all too small to sustain 
themselves, the insufficiency of funds furnished by voluntary con- 
tribution, are urged, &c, &c. 

Voluntaryism most Efficient. — Now, here we join issue, and 
assert ; in the first place, that an endowed Church, on this plan, 
will usually effect less for true religion and public morals, than 
voluntary Churches, notwithstanding these difficulties. For re- 
member that the State is, in fact, and must usually be, non-reli- 
gious ; i. e., the Rulers ^themselves will usually have a personal 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 321 

character irreligious, carnal, anti- evangelical. What is the fact ? 
How is the composition of governments determined ? By the 
sword, or by intrigue, by party tactics, by political and forensic 
skill, by the demands of secular interests and measures, by bribery, 
by riches and family, by everything else than grace. It must be 
so ; for the assumed necessity for a State endowment and alliance 
is in the fact that the community is yet prevalently irreligious, 
and needs to be made religious. Now, all just government is rep- 
resentative. It must reflect the national character. To disfran- 
chise, and shut out of office, citizens, because carnally minded, 
would be an absurd and impracticable injustice in the present state 
of communities. Now remember (Rom. 8:7): This enmity is 
innate, instinctive, spontaneous. If the State selects preachers, 
some individual officers of the State selects them ; and the least 
evangelical will most frequently be selected. Natural affinities of 
feeling will operate. Here, then, is one usual result of a Church 
establishment ; that of the men who are nominal members of the 
Church endowed, the least evangelical and useful will receive the 
best share of all that influence, power and money which the State 
bestows. Exceptions ; this is the general rule. What says His- 
tory ? Arians under Roman Empire ; under Leuton Princes, 
High Church Arminians ; worldly men ; semi-Papists in England ; 
Arminians in Holland ; Moderates in Scotland. 

Clergy tempted by Ease. — Again : The pecuniary support will 
be liberal and certain. Its tenure will be the favor of the Rulers ; 
not of God's people. Hence carnally minded men will infallibly 
be attracted into the ministry by mercenary motives ; and the most 
mercenary will be the most pushing. Hence progressive deteriora- 
tion of the endowed ministry, as in English and all Popish and 
Lutheran churches. Shall we be pointed to large infusion of ex- 
cellent men in English and Scotch establishments ? We answer, 
that their continuance is mainly due to the wholesome competition 
of Dissent. (Just the contrary of the plea, that the Establish- 
ment is worth its cost, by its wholesome influence in stimulating 
dissent.) And the proof is, that wherever dissent has been 
thoroughly extinguished, the leaden weight of State patronage has 
in every case, brought down the endowed clergy to the basest 
depths of mercenary character, and most utter inefficiency for all 
good. E. G., Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Russia. 

Endowment Unfair and Oppressive. — Again : Just as soon as 
any Church is endowed, it is put in an oppressive attitude towards 
all that part of the community who do not belong to it, so that 
prejudice will prevent much of usefulness in its ministrations to them, 
and perpetually stimulate secession. That I should be taxed to pay 
for the preaching of doctrines which I do not believe or approve, 
is of the nature of an oppression. That my minister should have 
no lot nor part in the manse and salary provi4ed at the common 



322 SYLLABUS AND NOTES 

expense, but monopolized by another man who is willing to en- 
dorse some doctrine which I think erroneous, is an odious distinc- 
tion. Indeed, it might be urged, as an independent argument 
against the mildest form of Church Establishment, that it implies 
some degree of oppression for opinion's sake ; it makes the State a 
judge, when it has no business to judge, and exercises partiality, 
where there should be equality. Nor will it at all answer to at- 
tempt to elude this difficulty, as in the colonial government of 
Massachusetts ; because this would enlist the State in the diffusion 
of error and truth alike, a thing wicked ; and it gives to the worst 
fqrms of nominal Christianity a strength they would not otherwise 
have, because all the " Nothingarians," being compelled to sup- 
port some Church, elect the one that has least religion. 

And once more : The only fair experiment of full religious lib- 
erty, without Church and State, that of our country, proves, so 
far, that the voluntary system r is more efficient than the endowed, 
in adequately supplying the growing wants of a nation. Let all 
denominations enjoy complete freedom and equality, and their 
differences become practically less, they approximate to a virtual 
unity and peace on an evangelic ground, and their emulation and 
zeal do far more than the State could do. The fact is, that this 
day, notwithstanding our heterogeneous people, and immense 
growth, we have more gospel, in proportion to our wants, than any 
except Scotland. And in England and Scotland almost all the en- 
terprise, which has kept up with growth and evangelized new dis- 
tricts, has been either dissenting, or a sort of voluntaryism among 
Established Church people ; as in getting up the Quoad Sacra 
chapels in Scotland. Our success is the grand argument against 
State churches. 

The Endowed Clergy must be Responsible to the State. — 
But, second, and more conclusive. This union, on this theory, 
between Church and State, necessitates the surrender of the 
Church's spiritual independence. It can no longer preserve its 
allegiance to Jesus Christ perfect. The necessity of this allegi- 
ance we will not stop to prove. If the State employs a denomina- 
tion to teach its subjects religion and morals, it is bound to have 
them well taught. The magistrate owes it to his constituents to 
see that the public money is well spent in teaching what shall be 
for the public good. And whether the doctrine taught is so or 
not, the magistrate must be the sovereign judge under God. In 
other words, the preachers of this State Church are, in their minis- 
terial functions, State officials, and, of course, should be subordi- 
nate, as to those functions, to the State. Responsibility must 
bind back to the source whence the office comes. But now where 
is this minister's allegiance to Christ? Whenever it happens that 
the magistrate differs from his conscience, he can only retain his 
fidelity to his Master by dissolving his State connexion. 



OF LECTURES IN THEOLOGY. 323 

Instance in Free Church of Scotland. — This was completely 
verified in the disruption of the Scotch Establishment. The 
British government claimed jurisdiction over spiritual affairs, 
which they supported by their salaries. The faithful men of the 
Free Church found that the only way to retain their allegiance to 
Christ was to relinquish their connexion with the State. When 
the secession churches now exclaimed : " Here is an illustration of 
the incompatibility of spiritual independence and church establish* 
ments." The Free Church men answered, "No. We admit that 
the jurisdiction of the State and its courts is just as to the 
temporal emoluments of a parish, but deny it as to the care of 
souls, or fitness for that care." But does not a suit about pay 
for value received necessarily bring into court the nature of the 
value received ? . Must not the magistrate who decides on the quid 
decide on the pro quo ? The right of the State is, to present to 
the Parish, and not to the salary of the Parish, only. The State 
has the same right to see the parochial duties performed by whom 
she pleases, as the salary enjoyed by whom she pleases. 

Christian State no Theocracy. — 3. In the incipiency of the 
English Establishment, the grand appeal of its advocates was to 
the example of the Israelitish kingdom, where State and Church 
were united so intimately. Hence were drawn all the arguments 
nearly for the King's headship over the Church. Hence Calvin's 
idea of State and Church. Nor is the argument yet given up. 
But the answer is, that a theocratic State is no rule for a State not 
theocratic. When a State can be shown, where there is but one 
denomination to choose, and that immediately organized by God 
himself just then : where there is an assurance of a succession of 
inspired prophets to keep this denomination on the right track ; 
where the king who is to be at the head of this State Church is 
supernaturally nominated by God, and guided in his action by an 
oracle, then we will admit the application of the case. 

In conclusion : The application for such an alliance does not 
always come from the side of the Church. Commonwealths have 
sometimes been fonder of leaning on the Church than the Church 
on commonwealths. Do not suppose that this question will never 
again be practical. 



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